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PODCAST That's a Good Question End Times Unveiled: Exploring Eschatology and the Second Coming of Christ February 12, 2024 Jon Delger & Nate Harney Listen to this Episode Jon So, Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc . That's a Good Question's a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I can serve as a pastor as well as the weekly host of this show, and you can always ask questions at peacechurch.cc/questions . I'm here today with producer Mitchell. Mitchell Hey, everyone. Jon And Pastor Nate. Nate Hello there. Jon And today we're going to tackle some questions about the end of the world. Should be fun. Yeah. Producer Mitchell, you have some questions for us? Mitchell Yeah, here's our first one. What is the rapture? And maybe, yeah, just a brief definition would be helpful here for those of us who may not have heard that word before. Questions #1: What is the rapture? Nate Yeah, well I feel like probably people's biggest depiction of the rapture is from the Left Behind series that really popularized it and I even remember a story about a childhood friend who his older brothers left their clothes out on the couch and tried to trick him into believing the rapture had happened. He didn't fall for it, but it was a good attempt. Jon When I was a kid, I actually, the left behind so popularized this idea that I remember as, I don't know, maybe a middle schooler or something like that. I remember there would be times where I'd be in my house and the whole family had left and I hadn't realized it and I'd walk around and be like, well, shoot, did I miss it? Jesus came back, he took everybody, and I'm the only one who got left. This stinks. Mitchell Maybe I'm the minority here, but I've actually never seen the Left Behind series. Just kind of just before. Jon Well, I tell you what, I actually, I don't think I've read any of the books. I think I read like the, I probably read like half of the first one or something like that. I don't think I've seen any of the movies, but I think just because of, and maybe that's me and Pastor Nate's generation thing, it was so popular at that time that you didn't have to read the books, you didn't have to watch the movies, you just knew the concepts and the ideas. Nate Yeah, and so I actually read the books, but I went to Moody Bible Institute, and they are very closely associated with some of the authors. Jerry B. Jenkins is one of the co-authors of that book series, and they hold to what is called dispensational premillennialism, and they have a pre-Trib view. We can maybe talk about what all those words mean. But the rapture, as is generally thought of and defined by most people, the primary scripture references you'd be looking at would be from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. If you read verses 13 through 18 you'll hear about the sound of the trumpet and the dead in Christ rise where the Lord himself is descending from heaven and then it says we'll be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so that this picture you'll see it depicted in artwork as the Christians and Jesus meeting in the middle of the sky is the picture that a lot of people paint of it. What exactly that looks like and what else is going on at that time really gets into more of your view on the millennium and your view on the tribulation. And that's all the big topics of eschatology, the study of end time. So , Jon, I know I'll sell you out right now. I know you're not a pre-millennial. You hold the Ah-mill position. We can talk about that. But, so what would an Ah-mill guy say, what is the rapture? Jon Yeah, that's an interesting question. So, just to process some of what you just shared. So, from 1 Thessalonians chapter four, that passage about being caught up in the air, that's where that word rapture comes from, right? So that's the idea, is that the rapture is when we get taken up to Jesus in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, the debate is about how exactly that happens, but that's what the rapture is. So, yeah, so to kind of zoom out and try to give a little bit of a big picture perspective, this is one of those topics where there's so much that could be said, but big picture perspective, there's a lot of different views on how the endof all things is going to happen as you might imagine. The book of Revelation is a book that is complex, that is, I would say, full of lots of symbolism. We'll talk more about that. But there's a lot of different ways you could take some of the things said in Revelation. And so one of the things I want to say to start is just that I think Christians can have various perspectives on how the end of all things is going to happen and still be faithful interpreters of the Bible. You know, the joke has been made, well, I'm a pan-millennial, which means I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm sure it'll all pan out in the end. That's kind of the joke. So I think the key things for Christians is we need to believe Jesus is coming back, there's going to be a judgment, you know, God's people, those who trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior, are going to be with Jesus for all eternity, having eternal life. Those who don't trust in Jesus haven't had their sins forgiven, and so they unfortunately spend eternity in hell apart from Christ and suffering justice and wrath. Jesus is ruling and reigning on the throne right now, and he will for all eternity. So those are some of the core things that we've got to believe. So when you look at Revelation chapter 20, that passage talks about a thousand-year reign of Christ. And a lot of the debate about when the rapture happens, when the tribulation, which just means like suffering period, happens, and when the millennial, the thousand-year reign of Jesus happens, that all gets pretty tricky. So there's usually thought of like there's a premill, which means that... So premillennial means that people get caught up in the air to Jesus before the thousand-year reign of Christ. Postmill means it happens after. And then Amill, which is kind of the traditional Reformed view, and the view that I would hold, is it's often characterized as we don't believe in a millennium, but that's not the case. It means that we believe that we're in the millennium right now. So to give you, I'm going to give you the short take of that. Yeah, I'd love that. So here's the short take, and then you guys can pick it apart. So what I would say is kind of a majority Reformed view of the end times is that right now Jesus is reigning, he's ruling and reigning. He has been since he defeated sin and death and hell and Satan on the cross and then ascended. So he's ruling and reigning right now. We're in that thousand year period. We think that that's more metaphorical not a literal thousand years But it's a long period of time that Jesus is on the throne and is is ruling and reigning And that God's people the church are living in the world then we're going to go through periods of tribulation or suffering between now and the end and one day Jesus is going to return and it's not that we don't believe in that there's going to be this period of time when the saints disappear and leave their clothes behind and then everybody else is living on the earth. We believe that there's going to be just an end, a moment at which the judgment comes and those who trust in Jesus go to be with Him for eternity and those who don't, that's when they face justice. Nate And it's associated with our view at peace of having a view of covenantal theology, that's one of the things that on my journey trying to figure out where I land with eschatology, I would say I would generally fall into the Ah-Mill camp. There's still a part of me that is hard to see the Millennium as fully symbolic. My gut of wanting to interpret as much of the Bible literally as possible makes me sometimes open and attracted to the post-mill view in small ways just because they kind of hold to a literal thousand-year reign, very different than a pre-millennial position. But generally, I'd fall in the on-mill. Jon And as long as you brought up the word literal, so we might as well talk about that real quick. So one of the things that people will accuse other positions, so the pre-millennial camp will accuse others of not taking Revelation literally, which I would be quick to say, well, how do you take a metaphor or symbolism literally? So I think the best way toif you say, we want to interpret the Bible literally, yes, but what that means is you want to interpret the Bible the way the original author intended you to interpret it. And I would say that the way that it's intended by the author to be interpreted is not as literal pictures, but as symbolic pictures of what the end is going to look like. Nate Yeah, that's a great distinction, and whatever your eschatology is, or your view of that, I think it's worth saying that every conservative Bible-believing Christian interprets different parts of the Bible symbolically because that's where they're meant to be. There's no question of, is everything literal? There's genre, there's clearly I mean, the easiest thing to look at is just the poetic books. There's some clear things where it's not saying that if you read Song of Songs or if you read Psalms, it's very clear that there's metaphorical, figurative, symbolic language used and the best way to interpret that properly is to interpret it the way the genre would have you interpret it. So with this apocalyptic literature, that's kind of the language we use to talk about revelation, but also Jesus gets apocalyptic in some of his teachings. And then if you look back at Daniel, chapter 9, where there's prophecies about 70 weeks, and you get into some of the numerical stuff that can get interesting. A lot of the pre-mill guys will get really into the charts and graphs and all that stuff. I do think one of the reasons why I love being on-mill is you don't have to figure out every single chart and graph to interpret what's gonna happen on which year and what times and there's a lot less of that. Jon I got to teach a class on this. Well, I was invited as part of a series of teaching on each of these positions and I got to be the guy to represent my position and that was my main argument was I said, if you want the least complex position, it's this one. Oh yeah. You just do the least amount of math and stuff like that. Nate Absolutely, and that simplicity, there's a beauty to that. Actually, when I used to be more pre-millennial and would have believed in kind of the more left-behind picture of how things were going to play out, in the end, I still remember one of the things that kind of put a question in my mind and made me start looking more and more at covenant theology versus dispensationalism, not just in regard to Revelation or End Times, but in regard to how we interpret all of Scripture, was learning that in the pre-mill, pre-trib position, that they believe during that thousand-year reign that for Israel the sacrificial system will come back. And something about that for me was not sitting right with thinking about Jesus as the final sacrifice. And I realized when I just kind of read the Bible plainly. I didn't see those distinctions between Israel and the church. And so for me to learn that the dispensational position and the pre-mill position believed that not only was there this distinction in the past and in the present, but that there would be this future distinction as well. I just, that's not what I was reading in the scriptures. And so, I should clarify that we have tons of brothers and sisters who hold that position, and we wouldn't articulate that we think that they don't believe the Gospel or that they're playing fast and loose with the Bible. We fundamentally don't agree on the interpretive lens they use to get to their end position. And so we here at Peace would land more in the all-mill camp. And I know that there's, I've talked to post-mill people who are around Peace, and I'm sure given a lot of the growth that we've had and people coming from different backgrounds, I'm sure there'll be some people listening right now surprised that we're not just pre-mill by a default, because that might be the only thing that they've ever known. But it's really interesting stuff to look into if you haven't done some research on it even though it can seem like, oh, why don't we just take that, you made the joke about the pan-millennial thing, hey, Jesus is going to return, why do we even need to think any more about this? But there's a whole genre of scripture that is worth looking into and is worth studying and figuring out where you land on. Jon Right, I joke about taking the simplest road, and that's what it is for me. It's a joke, because we want to take Scripture seriously. We want to hear whatever God has to say to us. We need to wrestle with that, understand it. It's meant for our good. And so the book of Revelation is not like a wasted book. God gave it to us to encourage us, to give us hope, especially in the hard times and as we think about the end coming. So we do need to wrestle hard with Revelation and try to figure out what it means. Now again, I think the best approach is that God intended it, that the Apostle John intended it to be sort of a symbolic picture of the end, that he's not intending for us to really see some of these symbolic figures. Even for example, you think of some of the multi-headed beasts and things like that that come in Daniel and in Revelation and places like that But yeah, I don't think those are literal pictures I think those are metaphorical pictures of things that are gonna happen between now and the end Nate Yeah, that's a it's a good point because when I was learning and being trained in that position They also believe that some of those creatures and some of those pictures are metaphorical So they don't they don't think that everything is literal. In fact, I remember sitting in classes and trying to track exactly. They were saying that we think the locusts are Apache helicopters, and we think Gog and Magog might be Russia and China. So they definitely believe that a lot of the apocalyptic literature is symbolic. So it's not too far-fetched to believe that a thousand-year reference could also be a symbolic reference. And that's where you and I would ultimately land. Mitchell But their symbolism would be only for people in our era of time. If this was Apache helicopters, the initial people who were reading Revelation wouldn't have been reading that going, Oh yeah, Apache helicopters. Jon Right, for sure. So I mean, an important point is to say that we take the Bible seriously. Don't hear us minimizing that. I think that's the argument of some, is that we're not taking it seriously. Like you, you made an interesting point that some people might be shocked to find out that there are these other positions. And that was my initial feeling. I think, I'm trying to think, I think in Bible college is when I started to encounter some other positions, because up to that point, left behind was kind of all I had heard. Man, and I just thought, that must be what everybody thinks. That must be what every Christian thinks. Nate Yeah, I mean, so much so, John and I, we got to be interns for a short season together at Peace Church a long, long time ago, but I remember in our library, those were some of the most popular checked out books in our reformed library, and it did not align in any way. Now, they are works of fiction, but a lot of people have formed their general eschatology kind of around those books or later the movies that came out following them. So, even in our church history, that was one of our most popular things in our library. So, it shouldn't surprise us that for a lot of people, that's kind of their default position. Nate They just picture a rapture of some sort, some sort of a tribulation period, and then followed by Jesus on a throne in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and what that all looks like. They probably don't know the details, but popular stuff that pops up is who is the Antichrist, and in whatever position you have, there's still categories and interpretations of what those things mean. They just look different based on how you view the millennium and then how you kind of work backwards from there. Mitchell Yeah. All right. So for those of us younger potentially listeners All right 18 year olds, I guess What was the left behind series? What was the theology that was taught there in terms of rapture? Question #2: What was the left behind series? What was the theology that was taught there in terms of rapture? Jon And yeah, well Vesternate lived with the guy who wrote it. That's true. We were ten floors apart he was in the penthouse and I never saw him but No, basically what they do is they take what is a relatively new? Nate That was the other thing that made me start to doubt some of my pre millennial teachings as I found out that it They wouldn't say this but it kind of came about in the 19th century right there not pre millennialism altogether There's position historic pre millennialism, but like the new modern dispensational form of it was at least popularized in the 19th century. They would say it was a return to the original biblical teachings that got lost for a long season. But then what I found out about it was that, yeah, it was just more of a recent thing that The language I still remember them using all the time is when you hold the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad picture of how to look at the world, but what they would really try to do is make as many connections as they could. What I saw happening is that it shouldn't surprise us that it became a popular book series and a popular movie series because it's very dramatic, it's very interesting and engaging. I mean it's it's the stuff that would work great for Hollywood or work great for a best selling series of books similar to how Harry Potter or Hunger Games would work. Now they would they would probably take offense to that because they weren't saying that they were true works but they kind of did use it as a tool to help try to educate people on eschatology but all that to say the book series what it did is it followed a group of people from an initial rapture then all through a seven-year tribulation eventually an Antichrist showing up and I'm trying to figure out who this Antichrist was and eventually the books wrapped with Christ's return and Millennial reign, but it was just a dramatic picture of what could happen if the pre-trib, pre-millennial, dispensational view actually played out. And the reason why it's it's got some cool allure to it is, you know, there's planes flying and a Christian pilot disappears into the air and someone else has to figure out how to fly the plane. Jon And the stars were teenagers. Nate Yeah, teenagers at the beginning. And then I think Nick Cage came in and took over the series. Jon There ended up being like 20, 30 books, right? Nate Well, there was a youth series and then there was an adult series. I think the adult had like a dozen books and the youth series, yeah, 30, 40 something. But you can know when Nick Cage is coming into your franchise, it's probably starting to go downhill fast. I know you're a big National Treasure guy, Jon. Jon I love National Treasure. I think those are great movies. Nate But you know, those aren't true either. He didn't really steal the Declaration of Independence. But that's a whole other thing. I know, Mitch, you probably don't know what that movie is either, right? Or have you heard of Mitchell No, I saw that one. Jon So Mitch, have you ever heard of the U.S. Constitution? I'm just kidding. Way before your time. So speaking of some of these questions about who is the Antichrist, what is the Rapture, all that kind of stuff, Nate, how do youif somebody comes up to you in the church lobby on Sunday and says, who is Magog and Gog and who is the Antichrist? How do you answer this question? Jon We'll be right back after this break. Elizabeth Hi, I'm Elizabeth, one of the co-hosts of MomGuilt, a podcast with new episodes every Monday. MomGuilt is a podcast about the daily struggles of motherhood. Stephanie and I share real experiences of MomGuilt and how we have found freedom from that guilt through the gospel. Listen to us on resoundmedia.cc or wherever you find podcasts. Nate Well, in all honesty, the first thing I usually do is point them to you, John. But if I'm actually going to do my job, I'll talk to them. I kind of have the neat thing of being able to get into the details with them a little bit more because I studied that and was tested on it, but I What I try to point them to I'd say the first thing is I'd say You know the important thing and this isn't the only important thing but the important thing is that we believe Christ is going to return a Bodily return and which leads to a bodily resurrection if you look at the Apostles' Creed, there are actually people who have heretical views of how end-time stuff will work. There's a whole sub-category of eschatology, preterism, and there's full preterism and partial, and some of the guys on the extreme end of full preterism might not believe in a bodily resurrection, and you start to get in the Gnosticism, and so there's stuff that's out of bounds for sure. We've got lots of fancy words to talk about this. Do you want to get into Preterism, Jon? No, I don't think so. That's the belief that all of this was fully fulfilled in the first century. Some people think that's the Amil position. That's not. We think the millennium, or that period of time of Christ's rule and reign was ushered in when Jesus came in and said The kingdom is here and that's you've probably heard someone say the when you talk about the kingdom already and not yet There's an emphasis on the on mill side. I would say on the already of Jesus ruling and reigning here and now versus the pre mill side They would say already and not yet in a different way. Their heavy, heavy emphasis is on the not yet, because Jesus isn't sitting on an actual physical throne in the geographical precise location of Jerusalem. But ultimately, I do think, you know, we've talked about lots of distinctions, thrown out lots of words, but I do think for Christians, there's more that unites us than that separates us, because we all believe that Jesus is going to return. We all believe that Jesus wins. Peace Church had a bumper sticker that said, Jesus wins at one point. And there's a cool simplicity to that, to know that we can all agree. But yeah, I think ultimately the thing that I would emphasize with a person coming up and asking that question is I'd start by emphasizing the thing we can all agree on, that Jesus is going to return, Jesus wins, and that there's going to be a new heavens and new earth, and we're going to live with him and get to worship him and enjoy him for all of eternity. But then I would, personally, I would start to point them towards figuring out some of the aspects of Scripture that they can, that are very, very clear. I think all Scripture is clear, but there is a reason why you can have Christians at a table who will all agree on the Gospel, that all agree on what I would call the primary tenets of theology. I don't think that the return of Christ and the core doctrines of eschatology of end things are secondary, but I do think where you land on the Millennium, the Rapture, the Tribulation, I would consider those ones that you can agree to disagree and partner hand-in-hand and minister together. So, if somebody was really sold on the pre-mill position, I think there's a total place for you at Peace Church, but I also would probably try to point them in what I think is a more faithful direction to Scripture, which I would land more in the alms milk camp. What would you say? Is there something you would add onto that? Jon Yeah, so I do have the experience sometimes when somebody comes up to me on a Sunday morning or sometime and says, Pastor John, is China and Russia? Yeah. And my typical answer is to say, maybe. We'll see. I don't know. Yeah, we're gonna find out. I have no idea. And that's kind of typical of the way that I look at those passages of Scripture, and that's what I try to encourage is I say, maybe. I don't know. I don't think it's really our job to speculate on that. I think the best thing you can do is read scripture and pray about that, and maybe just realize, hey, you know what? I'm not the President of the United States. I'm not in Congress. I'm not having to make policy decisions in relationship to some of these things. So I get to take a little bit of an easier perspective, even if I was in that situation. We just don't know. Yeah. Jesus is coming back. There are going to be some hard times between now and the end. We want to try to be faithful. We want to try to be godly, we want to share the gospel so that as many people as possible can trust Jesus and go to heaven. Nate Those are the things to focus on. And that's so good. And what you just made me think of is that Jesus was so clear when he's returning, part of his emphasis was on our readiness, how we live in light of knowing he's going to return and that we don't know the day or the time. We don't know the hour. And so to live in obedience, to live following the gospel, to live in the love of Christ and the truth of Christ, knowing that He's going to come back and we better be ready. And we better be, not because we need to earn our salvation or anything like that, but because God has given so much to us through the cross, through the empty grave, how can we not give everything back to Him in obedience as we wait for His glorious second appearance. Mitchell Yeah, there's a Martin Luther quote about this that says, someone asked Martin Luther, what would you do if you knew next week Jesus was coming back? And he said, I would plant a tree and pay my taxes. Kind of the idea of like living out the same faith that we're called to live out regardless of knowing when Jesus is coming back. Right. And my answer would be more like, I'd tell as many people as I can about Jesus, but then what somebody should say in return to me is, well, Pastor John, that's what you should be doing anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the point is that like, man, we don't need to know when the end is coming. Jesus said he's gonna come like a thief in the night. We're not supposed to know. We can't know when the end is coming. We just need to live every day as if it's tomorrow. Nate Yeah, and I like the point, but if I knew for sure Jesus was coming back in a week, I probably wouldn't go to my tax appointment. Jon Totally, yeah, right. Nate So I'm just not smarter than Marbury. Mitchell It's a bummer answer for sure. Nate, you had said something earlier about our position as all millennials that we believe that this was ushered in when Jesus came during his earthly, his reign came during his time on earth. Just as someone who isn't all millennial, but maybe is trying to look at this through some other perspectives, it seems like a counter argument, or an argument against that would be, well, doesn't millennium mean a thousand years, and hasn't it been a little bit late to that? Like, are we, have we missed it? Does that prove that we're wrong in some way? Nate No, that's fair, because we know it's been more than a thousand years, double that, since Jesus showed up on the earth and started bringing the gospel message and proclaiming that the kingdom was here and the kingdom was coming. Yeah, I think that's a great question, and again, it would go back to that a thousand years as a symbolic number, and throughout Scripture there are certain things that are treated as symbolism, especially with numbers. There are, you'll oftentimes hear some higher critics will try to pinpoint some exact thing where they go, wait, really, you know, in the book of Numbers where a number of, a count of people, all of them end in whole numbers, and they go, wait, is there no way that they would all end in these perfect numbers? And you go, well, there could have been a rounding up of count when you're trying to count thousands that you can round. And they go, well, then the Bible's not true then. And you go, well, hold on a sec. If that wasn't the intention of how they were doing it, of what they were trying to report, then it's not an error. error in the same way we, I mean, we could use examples all the time where if you say, you know, my wife will say, she makes fun of me of this, and she'll say, hey, can you bring the trash out or whatever, and I'll say, yeah, I'll do it in a minute. It's not going to be, she says in the Midwest, we say in a minute for all things. I didn't ever realize that. She's from Seattle. But I don't mean in, I'm going to wait 60 seconds. Sometimes in a minute means in 10 seconds. Sometimes, more times than it should be, it means in 10 minutes, and not in a minute. Mitchell For me, it usually means like tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking of the Super Bowl last night. They were talking about the attendance there, and it was 100,000 or more, and even in reporting, we don't use that hyper-literalism as saying, well, obviously that was all made up. and saw that there were people there. Nate Yeah, so we know how language works. And so for us, we would say, no, we don't mean a literal in the sense of 1000 years. And what does a year mean? How many times is the earth going around the sun? What we mean, as John said earlier, 1000 years means a really long time. It's not happening tomorrow. Jon Right. Mitchell All right. As we wind down, I want to just get these questions a little bit more solid. We had some really great conversation about this, but let's give some snapshots of these answers to these questions. So, what is the rapture? Jon All right. We said the rapture is when God's people ascend to meet with Jesus and be in heaven. Is that what we said? Nate Mm-hmm. Mitchell All right, second question. Do we believe that we are currently in the Millennium reign? Jon My answer is yes. Nate My answer is I think so, but I wouldn't be absolutely shocked if there's some form of a 1,000-year Millennium to come. Jon That's fair. Mitchell Awesome. All right, last question. Do you believe future prophecies about the tribulation and Christ's second coming will be fulfilled literally like how the prophecies were fulfilled about the first advent? Jon This would go back for me. This is I would say literally Meaning how the author intended yes, but literally in the sense that everything will happen in a very sort of strictly literal Nate My answer is kind of a no. Yeah, I would say I I don't think there's going to be a seven-year season of intense tribulation. I do believe that there's going to be apostasy as there has been now, and I think the way I read apocalyptic literature, I do think there'll be some sort of a larger apostasy to come. Some people I've read all millennial guys who say you need to look no further than the entrance of 19th-century liberalism as you know a forefront philosophy in modern Western culture that praises unbelief over belief and you go What's more apostasy than that? And so but yeah, there's there's tribulations in general. There's going to be apostasy But do I think it's going to be a seven-year period? I don't. Jon Right. When I look at Revelation, what you see is, if you look at the sort of the big picture, the outline of the book of Revelation, what you see is a series of these like, you know, there's bowls and there's just these different images of pain and suffering kind of being poured out. And that's what I would say we're experiencing. We're experiencing a series of suffering kind of comes and goes in the world and for the saints until Jesus returns. Nate All right. And stay tuned for Pastor Jon's incoming series of books, an amillennial version of The Left Behind. It's going to be short and a lot less dramatic, but we're just going to be his diary. Jon There'll be people living their everyday life, telling people about Jesus. Nate Paying taxes and planting trees, apparently. Jon At the end it's going to say, and Jesus came back and it was awesome. Praise God. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening. Some complicated stuff, but hopefully it's been beneficial to you as you think about this complicated stuff of the end of all things. Have an awesome week. Have an awesome week. You can find That's a Good Question at resoundmedia.cc or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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PODCAST That's a Good Question The Prosperity Gospel vs. Christian Faith: Unpacking the Difference October 10, 2023 Jon Delger & Ryan DB Kimmel Listen to this Episode JonHey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon. I serve as one of the pastors here at Peace, and I also get to serve as the weekly host of this show. Our purpose here is to help people grow in their knowledge of the Bible and their walk with the Lord by answering questions. So please submit questions at peacechurch.cc slash questions. We're always happy to hear them. We don't get to them all every week, but we love to receive them and we get to them eventually. And today, we've got some exciting questions for us. We've got with us today, Pastor Ryan, lead pastor of Peace Church. RyanHello. JonGreat to have you, brother. RyanThanks for having me. JonAnd our questions are gonna spiral off something that we're in the midst of as a church right now. So right now, we are launching, we just launched this past Sunday into a capital campaign where we are taking a spiritual journey as a church, praying and seeking the Lord about how he would call each of us to be generous and sacrificial and how we might give to expanding our facility so we can reach more people. We've been, I think some in our church would say that we've been beyond capacity for the last couple of years. I think we've definitely arrived at that point at least by now and so we're looking at expanding the facility so that we can reach more people. So here's the question. We're asking for money right now. What's the difference between us asking for money and one of the popular prosperity gospel preachers asking for money? RyanYeah, that's a very valid and fair question, and it's something that you need to have an answer for if you're going through a capital campaign. But I think for those of us who are listening who may not be entirely familiar with even some of these terms, how would you go about even defining what the prosperity gospel is? Question #1: What is the prosperity gospel? What's the difference between us asking for money and one of the popular prosperity gospel preachers asking for money? JonYeah, good question for sure. There's a ton we could say about that. We'll just ease our way into it, I think one of the staples of the prosperity gospel is this equation that if you do this, then you will get this. If you give money, then you will get even more back in return. Or just another piece of it I think would be this promise that to be a Christian means that things are going to go well for you in this world RyanYeah, I would say that the notion of if you give then God will double it back to you is an implication of it But I think when I think about the prosperity gospel and those who I've listened to who are clearly prosperity gospel preachers the for me what I pick up was the general notion that God's desire for those who follow him are to be rich and healthy. And if you're following God and you're not rich and healthy, then it's because you lack faith. And therefore, then that plays out with things like, so demonstrate you have faith by sending in your 50 bucks to fund whatever the TV preacher is trying to get you to give to. So for me, it's this notion of the prosperity gospel is not just prosperity financially, but also you prosper in your health. JonRight. I got to jump in on one thing that you just said. You said TV preachers. For those who are listening who don't know, TV is this thing that people used to watch because people used to be on these things called channels. Now they're just on YouTube. RyanOkay, so the screen on your phone, that bigger screen that hangs on your wall, at one point that was called a TV. It wasn't connected to the internet. There's these things called like waves, TV and radio waves that came through the air. Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, not just Eric, so that the maybe not TV preachers, the online, the online personas. But generally speaking, the prosperity gospel is that those who follow God, following God results in financial wealth and in fact, you're very healthy, that you don't get sick or when you do get sick, you automatically get healed. And so if you're poor or unhealthy, it's because you are not faithful enough or you're not giving enough. And that's, obviously, that's, there's, I hope, I hope those who are listening would hear that already their flags would go up and be like, whoa, something's going on here. So back to the question of how are we different from those prosperity gospel preachers? I would say the first thing is, in our theology, we would never say that God is promising that you will be financially wealthy and perfectly healthy for your entire life. We would never say that. In addition, we're not saying that if you give to this cause, to this campaign, we're not saying that's gonna result in you being wealthy or healthy. I think the best thing I can say you're gonna get from giving to this campaign is number one, a deep satisfaction that you're contributing to something awesome God's doing in this world. You can say that you are being faithful and responding to the moving of God as you discern how much he's calling you to give towards this. And that's, I mean, that's, I think those are, that's pretty, pretty clear distinction between what we're saying and doing and what prosperity gospel preachers are doing. And to give like the radical extreme, I'm not gonna be buying a private jet with what people are giving, nor would I be boasting about that on my social media. Right, right, for sure. Yeah, so you're not planning on promising everybody a money back guarantee that if you're not perfectly healthy at the end of this campaign, then money back. JonAbsolutely not. Right. And that's why I think I jumped to that at the beginning of the definition was because I think that you're right. That is an outworking of the theology. But that is kind of a staple, I think, of of those kind of preachers is that if you do this, then you will get this. It's like an equation as if as if you can sort of earn something from God, I think, is in there. RyanYeah. Yeah. So let me can we just play this off for a second? So what would you then say to someone who says to you, well Pastor Jon, are you saying that God wants me to be poor and sick? What's the flip of that then? Yeah, so no, God doesn't want you to be poor and sick, but what I say is we look at the Bible and we look at the overall storyline that God created a world that was perfectly good, and then Adam and Eve sinned, and sin came into the world, the world became broken and messed up, and then sickness is in there, we sin against God. There's diseases, there's natural disasters, there's all kinds of bad things now that are part of our existence in this world until the day when Jesus returns and makes all things new and better and perfect. And so what I'd say is that actually God does desire for us to be perfectly healthy and to have all that we might need or all that would fill our hearts with ultimate joy. And we will one day get that when we are with Him in Heaven and eternal life. But right now, we're still in that in-between where Jesus has come, he's coming back to bring the final redemption and restoration of all things. But we still live on the broken side of eternity, where sin and sickness still have some sway in this world. But I think, you know, God is working things for ultimately for our good. That doesn't always mean immediately that everything's going to be good, but ultimately, God's working for the good of those who love him. JonRight. So let's bring in some scripture even that kind of makes this point also. Just thinking about different parts of scripture that point to the fact that we as Christians are not designed to be totally free of suffering. Jesus was clear about that. He told us that we should expect tribulation and trouble and affliction. I think of passages in the Psalms, many are the afflictions of the righteous. Scripture is pretty clear that Christians should expect suffering. I think of the book of 1 Peter, talks a ton about the suffering that Christians are going to go through in this life. That's something we should expect. Think about Jesus' own life, Matthew 8, Jesus says, Foxes have holes, birds have nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus had a trying and difficult life and then ultimately was tortured and killed at the end. Things were not healthy and wealthy for Jesus. RyanPaul often recounts, or maybe an overstatement, Paul recounts troubles that he's endured at times. He's not shy about sharing that. He talks about the thorn in his side. We don't know exactly what that means, but we know that he dealt with trouble on a consistent basis in his life. And you see, even times where, like, Timothy's sick, and Paul's saying, hey, you should take a little something-something for that. I won't say what that is, but you can read the Bible for yourself. But yeah, no, I think when you see the New Testament, it's rife with examples of how even those who follow God endure hardships and trials at times. And Paul talks about he knows what it's like to have enough money and he knows what it's like to not have enough money. And there's an ebb and flow to that on this side of eternity. But what we are longing for is for the renewal and redemption of all things. That's why we are just praying for Christ to return. JonRight. And let me bring in maybe one or two passages that I think people can misinterpret in the wrong direction on this. So one of those passages is Genesis 12, the covenant that God makes with Abraham. He promises him blessing. He promises him, we always talk about kind of three things that he promises him. He promises him the blessing of descendants of land and that he will be a blessing to the nations. But that word blessing, what does that really mean? Is it just money? Is it just wealth? Or is there something altogether different in there? It's something that I like to talk about when we talk about this topic. And that actually true blessing in the Bible is a relationship with God. Ultimate blessing is having a relationship with God that starts now and lasts into eternity. RyanYeah, it's living the righteous life before God as He's laid out for us. I think of Psalm 1, blessed is the one, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, or sit and see the scoffers. His delight is in the law of the Lord. It's those who follow God and follow his ways. JonYeah, I think of the Psalm that says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I think that passage in specific is pointing to the idea that the ultimate desire of our heart is the Lord himself. So when you delight yourself in the Lord, you get all that your heart could ever want. You get God. RyanBecause you're delighting in that, that's it being played out. Yeah. Your delight in the Lord is your heart getting its ultimate desire. JonRight. So blessing is not simply money or health. Ultimate blessing is in God. Money and wealth or money and health can be a blessing from God. And we get that in different proportions in this life. But ultimately, we will be with God. RyanAnd that's the biggest blessing, because those who are sick, I mean I know you've talked with people who are sick and dealing with cancer who feel blessed. Even in the midst of that sickness and brokenness and disease, those who are not experiencing a time of financial flourishing can feel very blessed in what God has provided. And because, I mean, and also you kind of look at the standard of what does that even mean to be financially blessed. I'd say people on the lower side of middle incomes in America are among the richest people who have ever existed on the face of the planet. And so the fact I mean I don't make a blanket statement about this but I mean the fact if you can afford to go to Starbucks and buy coffee without it impacting your wallet, you are among the richest people who have ever lived ever on the planet. And so, yeah, I think we want to underscore what it means by blessing because that word is so abundantly used, rightfully so in the Christian world, but by some segments, it is a warped understanding of what blessing actually is. JonRight, so I mean, like I can say, loud and proud right here and now, every Christian will be blessed. You put your faith in Jesus, you're going to be blessed. That's true. Now, I think you have to be careful and explain what that means, because I would go on to say that doesn't necessarily mean money and health, that means eternal blessing and you might experience some other good things in this life. But I can very easily say that, yes, all Christians, if you put your faith in Jesus, you will be blessed. But blessing according to the terms of the Bible, not just worldly terms, how we might think of blessing. JonSweet. So, Pastor Ryan, other question. What are some subtle ways that prosperity theology might sneak into other preaching or even other everyday Christian thinking? So there are those who intentionally have this theology and they preach it and they teach it and Christians live that way. But what about those who don't intend on purpose to walk down the road of prosperity theology? RyanHow does it sneak into other preaching and other Christian thinking? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think part of it is we live in a society that's transactional by nature. We're used to giving and getting things all the time. And so I think in a lot of ways we just inadvertently sometimes that just sneaks into the notion of even our faith. Like when we think about giving money, in our world you give money to get something. Money is a tool that you use in exchange for goods and services. And so I think a lot of times when people bring that in subtly, this notion of like, well if I do, if I'm faithful with giving, then I must be getting something in return. And I think that is just, that's inherent for the way that we use money in every other instance in our life. Whether we're buying groceries or saving for college or something to that effect. So I'd say that's one of the ways is that just this whole notion that we use money exclusively for that purpose in every other sphere. Well, and I even hear stories from very well-meaning Christian brothers and sisters about that. New Christians, I've heard this story a couple times from a new Christian who started coming to our church and they start giving and they maybe tell a story of, oh man, last Sunday I gave for the first time, I gave 20 bucks and man, you wouldn't believe it, the following week I found 30 bucks in my dryer or something. And it's like, see, man, God totally delivers on his promises. And I kind of go, oh, wait a minute. That's not the equation. That's not quite how it works. JonIt's cool that you found some money and maybe that is the Lord's blessing for that week, but that's not how giving works. RyanYeah, exactly. That's not something you can expect every single time. And, you know, something like that, for us, I just want to push back on that. I feel like, yeah, I'm glad that you are open, your eyes are open to see where God is going to continue to bless you and stuff. But that's not what you can expect every single time. And I'm not sure you can really make a direct correlation. All things come from the hand of God either way. And I mean, did that recently happen to you? Not super recently, but yeah, it's happened. JonI can think of two times off the top of my head that I've had. RyanYeah, so I mean on the flip side I say that and then on the other end I also can say, and I said this before, I don't feel like I can out give God. Like every time I do give I feel like it's not that we get something in back it's just that God's blessing continues to appear more abundantly. So if anything I guess you could one of the things you could say is that when you give and when you're being faithful you you're growing in your faith and therefore you have more eyes of faith to see where those blessings already have in your already happening in your life and I think that's part of it too is like when you give and you're generous and you're responding to God's blessing and When you when you respond to that that's an act of faith You're growing in your faith by doing that your eyes are becoming more attuned to See see the world through the lens of faith. And then by doing that, I think you do end up seeing how God is always blessing you. Because here's the reality, I mean, I know we're picking on an anecdotal type story, but that $30 is in your dryer, you're gonna find it one way or another. You know what I mean? JonBut it's just nice to know that, hey. Well, or even if God miraculously put $30 in your dryer, that wasn't a, you gave 20, so I gave you back 30. RyanThat's what I'm saying, like the whole transactional approach to how we use money, you can't think about it like that. That you're, God's this magic vending machine that you put money into, and instead of getting the one candy bar, oops, two comes out now, you know? That's not how it works. JonYeah, totally. It's easy to sort of think that way. Any other ways that prosperity theology sneaks into our thinking? RyanI think that you know what we talked about is like the biggest and most insidious but also sneaky way that it does that this whole notion like it's a tit-for-tat you know, pro-pro type approach to our finances and especially when we give. We give out of the abundance of God's faith towards us and we're just responding to that. And the whole notion is more blessed to give than receive. And so I think the blessing comes in giving, and when you truly understand that, I think your desire to give increases, not because of what you get in response in the transaction sense, but just the blessing of giving is so abundant, so beautiful. JonWell, so let's talk about maybe that transactional way of thinking even in terms of other things, maybe even not in terms of money, but maybe like if when we pray to God, we say, well, God, I'll do this if you'll do this, or we think, God, I'll stop doing this if you'll do this for me. You ever run into anybody that thinks that way? RyanSo our producer, Mitchell, thinks like that, so. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, Mitchell. JonThat should be a staple now. I should just blame him for everything. RyanSo Mitchell's not like that. I think he's theologically strongest one of us all. Yeah, he does not think that. I'd say, you know, along those same lines, this notion of, I think, how it continues to play out. Like if someone is buying into the prosperity thing consciously or subconsciously, one of the ways that plays out is they give and maybe they're not experiencing the blessing that they think they should be giving so therefore they start giving all the more to try and get more of blessing or they gave 50 bucks and they didn't experience the blessing like they were thought they're going to so next week they're gonna have a hundred dollars because they're trying to buy a blessing and they're not thinking that maybe they're not they're not given enough to get the blessing from God I think that might be another way that sometimes that plays out With that notion of if I do this then God you're gonna do this and so Well, maybe I didn't come through on my end of the bargain. So I need to do more. JonWhat about the flip side to of negative consequences from God do you You're into that where people say well, man, I did this and so God is going to do this negative thing to me. What do we think about that thing? RyanSo like you didn't use this word, but you talking about maybe like an act of curse Like this notion of like I did something bad now God's gonna curse me and make it all the more work Yeah, no, I I think there's the there's that's not how it works I think there's the general curse that we live in in this world. This world's been cursed by sin and When we sin, it's not that God's actively actively cursing us, we're just experiencing the negative, the unhealthy fruit of our actions. When you enter into sin, you commit sin, guess what's going to happen? Bad things will ultimately happen to you. That's one of the ways I think I would push back on that. JonYeah, I've heard a number of people say that, you know, they've said, oh man, Pastor, I'm experiencing this right now and I think it's also that transactional mindset, like you said, it doesn't work like that in terms of that God just says, well, you did this. And so I'm going to punish you in an equal amount. Now, scripture is clear that the Lord disciplines us for our good. So he, you know, he might bring consequences into our lives in order to teach us, to train us away from unrighteous things. But it's not a tit for tat. It's not a one for one, you did this and so now you're gonna get this. RyanOr the notion of someone says, I cheated on my taxes and so God sent the IRS after me. God didn't send that, that just was happened, bro. Yeah, right. You know, like, so that notion of like that, I don't know what the theological term would be, but those sort of like specific curses, God doesn't do that. JonYeah, I think it comes back to that, it comes back to the other transactional piece that I think prosperity gospel talks about so much is faith. It talks about faith as a quantitative thing that if you have enough of it, a certain amount of it, then you earn something from God, you get something from God. I think that's kind of a similar way that I hear it talked about. Yeah, so it's like, you know, one misunderstanding I think people have is you read Proverbs and Proverbs is sort of general wisdom for life. That's the genre of what Proverbs are. That this is something that is generally true, that if you live according to this, that's a good way to live, that's wise in this world. But sometimes people take that as if it's a promise, that if I do this, then I will get something good. And Job is the counter story to that, in that Job is introduced in chapter 1 as being the greatest of all men. He's great, he's righteous, he walks before the Lord in the right way, and yet everything goes wrong. So Job is kind of a counter-narrative to the idea of the prosperity gospel. RyanYeah, I think Proverbs too, you know, we're talking about Proverbs. Proverbs are principles, they're general principles, they're not promises. You see, like you were to take Proverbs as promises or mandates versus general principles for righteous living. JonSo, related to this topic, this past Sunday you preached a sermon on the goodness of God and I actually got to be in the prayer room afterwards and had two people come up to me separately and both asking for prayer and specifically they shared just about some bad things that happened to them recently, some negative circumstances, and how that was causing a challenge for them to trust that God is good, which is something we experience commonly as Christians. RyanSo to respond to that, I would say God is good because He's good in and of Himself. And part of the ways we see that is when there's times where He's good to us. But the fact that we live in a sinful broken world isn't proof that God is bad. The fact that bad things happen to us isn't proof that God is bad. I mean, partly because Scripture never makes that qualification or standard. I mean, that's not how Scripture reveals who God is. That's not how God has revealed himself in Scripture whatsoever. What we know is that God is with us when times are bad, and even more so when times go bad, when times are not good, the reason we can have hope is because God is good. Our hope that we have is contingent on the fact that God is good. Because God is good, we can have hope that whatever we're going through, God will make right in the end. And so I get it, though. I mean, when bad things happen, those are times that our faith gets tested, absolutely. And people who are going through those times need to be talked with and loved with a shepherd's heart, and not to automatically, you know, demean them or question their faith, but walk alongside them and remind them of the truths of Scripture that they're living into, or they're employing a cultural notion of a general God, not the specific notion of the revealed God in scripture. And we have to point people back to that, like crush the cultural God that we've crafted in our own minds and point us to the actual God who's revealed himself through scripture that does not promise that things will always be good, but he is good and he's gonna be good through it. And we lean on him with our ultimate hope of the final restoration when all the sin and brokenness has been brought to judgment. JonRight, and I would say this is really the ultimate or the typological temptation that human beings face. Think of the garden, right? In the garden, Eve is talking to Satan the snake, and he's tempting her to believe that God is not good. See, God told you you couldn't eat all the fruit. Oh man, God must not be a good guy because he's not trustworthy because he doesn't let you eat of this tree. So it's the temptation going all the way back to the beginning to, are we going to believe that God is good because he tells us he's good and we've seen it? Or are we going to be swayed by the voice of Satan, our circumstances to just think he's not good? RyanSeriously, I mean, if you think about it, I think the most terrifying possibility out there is that God is not good. That there is a God and he's not good is without question the most terrifying notion that's possibly conceivable. The fact that there's an all-powerful creator who can command anything and everything at beings not good, that is utterly terrifying. And I just don't think in their heart are people believe that. I think people experience terrible times and they're just trying to reconcile that. And that's one of the ways they process it. JonAnd we see that all through our scripture, the psalmist and others, you know, experience that. I've felt that myself. I've asked myself that question, you know, all these bad things are happening. Can the Lord really be good? RyanFor however bad things are, it's not as bad as if God was bad. JonSure, totally, totally. Well, I mean, if God was not good, then we can't even trust the good promises of the Bible, which means that we have no hope that good things are coming in the future. So that's a whole different bad world to live in. But one of the Psalms I thought of on Sunday was Psalm 77. It's one of my favorites, one of my that I go to when things are tough. The opening of the Psalm asks the question, has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he forever shut up his compassion? So it's asking that question, is God still good? Has he forgotten about me? And then ultimately the psalm turns and says, but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. And it goes on to recount the good deeds of the Lord going back to the Exodus. And so throughout Christian history or throughout the history of God's people. And we can do the same thing. We can look at the Bible and recount the history of God's goodness to us and even look in our own lives and recount the history of God's goodness to us. RyanAbsolutely. Amen. Amen to that. JonCool. Well, thanks, brother. Thanks for the time. Thanks, everybody, for listening. It's been great to spend some time with you. If you have more questions, please submit them at peacechurch.cc/question. We love getting to try to answer these biblical questions in plain language. RyanCan we add something? Hold on. I want to add one thing to that. This is something we've been dealing with. For those who listen, I think sometimes people have questions and they don't know where to ask or how to ask. And so that's what we're providing this for. But sometimes people have a question that they don't necessarily want it talked about broadly. If you'd like one of the pastors to respond to you personally, it is a very, very small number of people who see the questions that are asked. If you could include some contact information, one of our pastors would follow up if you want that. But we'd also very much encourage you, if you have these questions, someone else also does. So ask them and allow us to talk about them questions, someone else also does. So ask them and allow us to talk about them more broadly.

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A Season Is Ending And Beginning Sermon Series: Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, Amen. Today we are seeing a season come to an end here at Peace Church. Today we are letting go of this space, this room being our worship center. But please, please do not confuse this building or this room with Peace Church. We are Peace Church. And this is where Peace Church meets, at this building. For the last 20 years, God has given us this room to worship Him, but in three weeks, we'll start a new season at Peace Church, where we worship in a new space, where we, Peace Church, worship in a new space. For today, a season is ending, but also one is beginning. And a beautiful passage that reminds us of this is found in the book of Ecclesiastes. Would you please turn there now? We'll jump to chapter 3 and we'll read verses 1 to 15 together. If you want to use the Bible as we provided, that's on page 705. Now as you turn in there, a quick word about the book of Ecclesiastes. Very important book of the Bible. This book is the teachings of a man who is as successful as a man can be and he's also as wise as a man can be. This is gold-level teaching for the Bible. And yet through all his wisdom and through all his success, he has found this simple truth that everything is ultimately meaningless until we learn to live unto God and enjoy Him in our everyday lives. And in chapter three, we are reminded that the passage of time produces good things and hard things, but through it all, God is in control. And so I invite you to please stand for the reading of God's word. As we read Ecclesiastes chapter three, verses one to 15. Would you hear God's word? For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pick up what is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to tear, a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love, a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business of God that he has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time, and also he has put eternity into man's heart. Yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end, I perceive there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, and also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his toil. This is God's gift to man. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it nor anything taken away from it. God has done it. So the people fear before him. That which is already has been. That which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Amen? Amen. Let's pray, and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father of glory, 20 years of ministry have happened in this room, over a thousand sermons, countless baptisms, and today, Father, we give thanks to you. Thank you for giving us this space that has been used to share your love and your truth. As we retire this space from being our worship center, may it continue to glorify you through fellowship as people gather here to still share your love and to grow in the gospel. For we pray these things in the power of the Spirit and in the precious name of Jesus our King. And everyone said, Amen. Amen. You may have a seat. All right, church. Let's be reminded of this one thing here today, and it's this. Whatever season we are in, what matters is that we glorify God forever. And as we look at this very famous and maybe even infamous passage, let's consider two thoughts here today at Peace Church, and here's the first one. Two thoughts. A season is ending because nothing lasts forever. Verse 1 says this, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. This is one of the hardest things about life. And the more we grow, and the more we age, the more we learn this lesson. Things change, things come, things go. Babies are born and grandfathers die. This is the way of the world, at least until Christ returns to make all things new. So if nothing lasts forever, how can we believe in things like hope or truth? Well, here's what I'd say to you. Don't try to outthink the Bible. Scripture tells us something very important. Verse 1, For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. We change, but God does not. And so, yes, on this side of eternity, there are seasons that come and there are seasons that go. As the Bible says in verse 2 and 3, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to build up. These verses remind us of the ups and downs of life, the changing of the seasons of life. And I will tell you, I think this is a great challenge, especially to us here in America. On the right side of things, conservatives want to maintain. We want to hold on. We don't want things to change. We want to, as our name implies, we want to conserve. On the other hand, on the left side of things, progressives always seemingly want to be moving forward, although most of them can't tell you what the destination will be. All that matters is that they feel like they are progressing. And God is reminding us here, this is not about holding on to what won't last, and it's not about moving to the future. Life is about seasons. Life has cycles. God is saying to progressives, there's nothing new under the sun. God gives us seasons and we at Peace Church, we are in a season that is ending, which means we're also in a season that's about to begin. And that's the second thing that we see. A season is beginning because God reigns forever. All this talk of seasons coming and going leads to the natural question that we see in verse 9. Hopefully you have your Bibles open here today. Verse 9 says this, what gain has the worker from his toil? Translation, if nothing lasts forever, then what's the point? And I love how the Bible so often asks and answers the questions that we all are thinking. It does that if you would just keep reading. Just keep reading and you'll end up finding that actually, actually the Bible tends to answer the questions we're all thinking. Verse 10 says this, I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Meaning, just because seasons end do not mean they are not meaningful. It just means their time is done. As the Bible says, He has made everything beautiful in its time. Friends, this is a sobering reminder that all things are part of God's plan. God is not part of our plan. We are part of His plan. And His plan is bigger than ours. It's eternal. And there's part of our heart. I would say in all people that know this. Verse 11, He, God, has put eternity into man's heart, yet so they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceive there is nothing better for them, for humans, than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live. Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. Let me summarize that for you real quick. In our hearts, we realize that there is a grander purpose being played out in the universe, and we understand that it's bigger than we can comprehend. And since we know this, since we know there's a bigger plan, since we know that it's bigger than we can comprehend, then what are we left to do? Live a good life and enjoy it, and give thanks to God along the way as we take comfort knowing that He is in control of His eternal plan. As we've been reflecting on this morning, no matter the season we are in, what matters is that we glorify God forever. Glorifying God, hear me, glorifying God is the ultimate purpose of every action of our lives and even the ultimate purpose of creation itself. And so, with the end of an era, let me give you a few ways that we can glorify God, both now and forever more. First one is this, we glorify God by respecting the season God has ordained. Who is a lifelong West Michigan native? Let me see, lifelong, lived here forever. Then you know like I do, one of the most wonderful parts about living in West Michigan is that every season makes itself clearly known in all of its glory. We have the sunniest summers, we have the snowiest winters, we have the most beautiful autumns, we have the most colorful springs. But you know and I know that we cannot enjoy a season without the previous one coming to an end. And this should be a reminder that God has ordained the changing of the seasons, and so don't curse what God has ordained learn to embrace it a season is closing at Peace Church And we are thankful to God for what has been amen and listen for many of us Maybe your pastor here for a moment for many of us Who know and love Peace Church who have been here for years, if not decades, there will be an adjustment. There's an adjustment coming for us all, but I would say particularly for those who have been here even longer than myself. And here's what I'll tell you, an adjustment is coming and that's okay. It's okay for things to feel new. It's okay for things to feel a bit foreign, but let me get ahead of us for here for a moment. There will be those of us here who think, as we go into this new space, and it's beautiful and it's bright and it feels fresh and it feels clean, there'll be those who walk in and think, is this even Peace Church anymore? And listen, that's a natural question. That's a natural way to feel. But with that, my loving encouragement and challenge to you as your pastor is in that moment, you must remember Peace Church is not a building. We are a people. And one of the most beautiful things about this new space is that you're going to be able to see more of the people of Peace Church. Yes, an adjustment is coming, and that's okay. And so when that moment comes and you feel more lost than excitement, challenge yourself and say, Lord, I am thankful for what you're doing. I am thankful that I get to see more of the people of Peace Church. I am thankful that of churches dying in America, that we get to see you do something amazing, that we get to see you grow this church to the point where we need a new worship center. I understand that moment will come. And I'm telling you, I'm anticipating that in my own heart as well. I've only been here for the better side of a decade, and I'm preparing my heart for an adjustment. And that's okay. Space is important, but what matters more is the people who fill that space. Amen? Amen. All the renovating, all the changing of our space is the season that God has ordained for us here and now. For everything there is a time. So don't curse what God has ordained for us, but embrace this season. And when you do, you'll not only glorify God, but you'll see the beauty in what He's doing. That's the second thing we're gonna look at. Glorify God by recognizing the beauty that God has created. Verse 11, God has made everything beautiful in its time. Now as a pastor, I have had the blessing of interacting with literally thousands of people, and I've noticed many consistent things among all types of people, but there's one thing in particular that I'll confess that I also know to be true in my own heart, and it's this, it's easier to be overly critical of the now and idolize the past. I think we tend to think the past is better than what it actually was. I think we tend to think what's happening now is worse than it actually is. Is God on the throne? Then let's be excited. We need to learn to see the beauty in the moment that God has given to us, because life goes too fast to live in the past. And as we close up this season at Peace Church, we will thank God for what He has done, because He's done amazing things. But we will not long for this season that we are letting go of. We are letting go of it with thankfulness, but I am telling you, as a pastor here, we will not sit and lament and long for the past. We will embrace the season that God has given us as we see him do amazing things now. Amen? Amen. We will recognize the beauty of what God is doing in the here and now because this is what God is doing and it's been his work all along. And that's the third thing. We will glorify God by revering the works that he has done. Verse 14 says, I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it. Nothing can be taken away from it. God has done it so that the people before people fear before him. This is so, so simple, but so, so easy to forget. God's works are his alone. This is why he alone gets the glory of what happens at Peace Church. Not me, not you, not our elders, not our staff, not our great volunteers. God gets the glory. Psalm 127 says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Our new worship center, our expanded parking, our renovated space, unless it's ultimately God doing this, I'm telling you, I want no part of it. But if it is God who's doing this, I'm all in. Who's with me? Amen. Our new worship center is going to be exciting, but at Peace Church, we're going to give God the glory for all of His work. And so let me give you one more way to glorify God. A very Peace Church thing to say, but I'd also say it's a very biblical thing to say. Last thing I'd say to you here now is this. Glorify God by receiving the truth that God has revealed. Our passage says in verse 15, that which is already has been. That which is to be already has been. And God seeks what has been driven away. The truth is this, that God is in control of everything even time itself. Now Bible study real quick, this last verse is notoriously difficult to translate into English and that's why you're going to see most English translations translate this last verse differently. Go ahead and cross-referenced it later when the Bible says here in the ESV in the English Standard Version when the Bible says God seeks what's been driven away remember this is in the context referring to the passage of time and so this is about reminding us that even though the past is gone God will still hold things accountable his justice will prevail God is in control and because he is good he will make all things right in the end, even things that have been passed. And so this is the truth that is revealed. Because God is in control, you can have hope. Hope in God, hope in what is to come in this next season. So put your hope in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which we are going to celebrate right here and now by having communion for the last time in this space. And so with the end of an era, let me remind you, whatever season we are in, what matters is that we glorify God forever and ever. Amen? Amen. Amen. Let's pray and prepare our hearts for communion.

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PODCAST That's a Good Question Why Didn't God Keep His Promise to Me?: A Conversation with Shannon Popkin November 18, 2024 Jon Delger & Shannon Popkin Listen to this Episode Hey everyone, welcome to That's Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc. That's Good Questions, a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm John, I serve as a pastor as well as part of this show. You can always submit questions to peacechurch.cc/questions . And today I'm here, as always, with Mitch. And we have special guest Shannon Popkin with us. Hey, it's so good to be here. Yeah. Shannon is an author and speaker. She's the host of the podcast Live Like It's True, which is part of the Resound Podcast Network. So we highly, highly, highly recommend that you go listen to that. And she's also come out with a brand new six-week Bible study called Shaped by God's Promises. And we're excited to dive into a little bit of that and talk about that some more today. Yeah, well I'm so thankful for ReSound Media and the opportunity to collaborate with you guys. So grateful for all that you're doing and just getting the word out about truth and fighting back the darkness. Amen, that's what it's all about. That's why we love getting to be on a team together, going to events together, having to create resources. Yeah. Yeah, it was so fun to have you this summer, you and Stephanie. Yeah, yeah. Came to an event and brought, and then being at TGC, handing out coffee mugs, that was awesome. Yeah, we've been having a blast, yeah. Looking forward to doing some more of that. And Speak Up, you're coming to Speak Up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Are both of you gonna be at Speak Up? Yeah, probably. Okay, that'll be great. Yeah, it should be fun. Cool. Well, today we're gonna have a conversation kind of around the question of why didn't God keep his promise to me a Question that people ask from time to time a question that probably all of us feel from one time to another You know whether we feel like we should feel that way or shouldn't feel that way I think all of us think that at times of why isn't God keeping his promises to me? So we're gonna kind of talk about that question Shannon You have a great book that kind of talks about that question. You want to talk about that for a quick minute? well, sure, it's a look at the life of Abraham and Sarah and how God entered the scene making these promises to them, but it looks like God wasn't keeping his promises, you know, and so Them grappling with this. How did they respond? You know What did they turn to instead of to God and instead of waiting instead of faith? At times they responded in faith to God's promises that other times they didn't. But I think, yeah, their story is just a great backdrop to contemplate some of these questions that we struggle with too. Yeah, totally. So as we're getting into the topic, can you share just what are some examples, people that you've met or situations that you've been in or thought of, when do people feel this question of why isn't God keeping his promises? Yeah, I think it's like those times in life where there's this great disappointment. We have this expectation of what we expected would happen, you know, who God was gonna be, how he was gonna, how my story was gonna turn out. And there's a divorce or there's a death or there's infertility or a miscarriage. It's like those, we're grappling with disappointment or, you know, it's taking too long. Yeah. We're waiting on a spouse. We're waiting on a baby. We're waiting on our country to respond in the way, you know, sometimes it's bigger scenarios in life, all encompassing, whether it's worldwide things, you know, like the pandemic or, or things that just affect us nationally or affect our community. And it just feels like it's taking so long. Where is God? Why is he not doing what he promised? I think it's sometimes where we land. And so I think the first question that we have to ask is, well, what actually did God promise? And so, you know, we have a Bible that is full of promises from God. It's wonderful. And we, as God's people, we love the promises. But there's a problem when I think we misappropriate the promises and claim, you know, there are some promises made in the Bible that are not for all people living in all different spots on the timeline. Yeah. So it's important that we think through that carefully. Yeah. What would some of those examples be of promises that we can really misappropriate. Yeah, well, can I share a funny story first? Yeah, absolutely. I was reading the little notes in my Bible one time, and, you know, the little study notes at the bottom, and I read it said, many will become pregnant without having sexual relations. And I thought, when is that? I don't remember hearing that prophecy. Well, I looked a little closer and it said, Mary will become pregnant. So I was like, Oh my gosh, I got to wear my glasses. But so like, there's a bad one, you know, maybe like, pull out and hang on your wall or something, you know? Oh, my goodness. But I had a moment of being disoriented, like, where is that promise? And I think, you know, Mary had a promise that she would have a baby. Sarah had a promise that God would make of them a great nation. So by implication, she would become pregnant. But I've heard of a woman speaking to a large group of women saying, claim God's promise to you for a baby. Well, there is a problem when we claim a promise that was given to one person or we turn a principle into a promise? I think that's one that I hear a lot is, you know, train up a child in the way he should go and when he's old, he will not depart. And so then we have these prodigal children and we're claiming the promise, right, that this child will return to the faith. Or and you know, that's a principle. It's not a promise. Or you know, back to like certain people or certain time places on the timeline, God promised specific things to the nation of Israel that, you know, I mean, in a sense, he has promised to us as children of Israel. And yet, you know, there, we have to keep an eye on where, how's the story unfolding. And so, you know, the health and wealth gospel is this claiming God's promises that you'll have, you'll be healthy and you'll be wealthy and that you'll have all of these blessings in the here and now, whereas, yes, you will have all of those blessings as a child of God. And yet, I think sometimes we get the date wrong, right? We claim things now that belong to the there and then. Right now, we live in this darkness, the brokenness of this world. And it's very appropriate for us to go to God and say, why God, how long, oh Lord. And yet to claim a promise that my life here now, that all of these promises will be realized, it just sets me up for great hurt and disappointment. Yeah, I love that when you said we get the date wrong. Yeah, that's exactly it. Sometimes we talk on the show about the already and the not yet. Some of God's promises are just that. There's a sense in which they're already true, and then there's a sense in which they're not yet true. So on the one hand, we are saved from our sin by Jesus, and yet at the same time, we're not yet fully with him in heaven, in the new heavens and the new earth. We don't get to experience the fullness of the blessings of our salvation. And so, yeah, we get the timeline wrong. It is true that we will be one day healthy. We will have everything we could ever desire, namely God, but that's not yet. That's not this life. Yeah. So, yeah, in the back of the Bible study, Shaped by God's Promises, I made lists of God's promises, but I listed them out by here are promises for here and now, and here are promises that are for there and then. And what was interesting to me is looking through all of, and it's not a complete list, but looking through all of the promises for the here and now, we don't really have a lot of tangible promises. You know, so if you're looking for that verse that tells you the cancer is going to go away or the relationship will be restored or you will have the number of children that you were hoping, there is no verse like for the here and now. But we have lots of tangible promises for the there and then. So I was recently talking to a girl who was in a wheelchair, and this was really hard on her husband. He had lost his faith because she had an accident, she was paralyzed, she was living in a wheelchair. And he's doubting, he's one of those people saying like, God hasn't kept his promises to us and to our family. And I said, well, let's just think of it this way. What if you got up out of that wheelchair and you were able to, I had asked her, like, what's the thing that you miss most living in a wheelchair? And she's like, I just want to run upstairs. I haven't been able to run upstairs, you know? And I said, what if you could get up out of that wheelchair and run upstairs a dozen times? Like, would that change your perspective on God? She's like, well, yeah, and I said, well, there is coming a day that the lame will walk the blind will see like there is coming a day where you will get up out of that wheelchair. And so like to judge God prematurely on what you are experiencing in this moment is like you there's great room for you to be disappointed. But it's also a maligning of who God is, you know, to say that he has not been faithful because you're living in a wheelchair. Well, let's wait until we see the full extension of how God is going to respond to his promises in the there and then and judge in that moment how faithful God has been. Like, let's not prematurely judge that. Yeah, I love how you said that God's promises aren't for every person and every time. I think that's such a helpful thing for us to understand because our perspective can be so narrow sometimes in how we see what it means to be a Christian in just our context. As soon as you get out of America, as soon as you get out of some of these more privileged areas, the idea of what it means to be a Christian can become way more clear. I even like, you know, the idea of, you know, not every promise is for every person in every place. I mean, the promise for a child is not for me and Jon. You know, like we're men and stuff like that can't happen for us, right? That would be crazy for us to claim that, right? That was an important biology lesson you just gave us. Hey, actually, Mitch, you were talking earlier about a specific verse that we sometimes misuse in this way. Yeah, I think our favorite verse to misuse and our favorite verse as pastors to come after is probably Jeremiah 29 11, right? That's so easy for us to, I think we see that all over the place. It's on every, you know, it's in Hobby Lobby on every, you know, wall decoration. I know the plans that I have for you, right? Plans to prosper you and to give you, what is it? Yeah, to prosper you and not to harm you, not to harm you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And what's interesting is the you in that verse is it's more like y'all, you know, I know the plans I have to prosper y'all, right? It's collective. So that's one thing. But it's also this is we're talking about Israel. So as pastors, how do you respond to that? And when somebody is quoting Jeremiah 29 11. One of my favorite things to do is I had a professor do this for us in one of our one of our first terminated classes. He had us read Jeremiah 27 through 29. And I remember reading it going, what in the world is this about? Like, I don't understand what we're doing here. And then I got to Jeremiah 29 11. I started laughing because I realized how out of context we pull it because it is clearly about Israel. It's clearly about God's people, a group of people, and not me, Mitchell, sitting here in Middlethorpe, Michigan. It's so much bigger. And so I always like to ask people, why don't you read the chapters around it and just see if you still see it that way. Well, and even Abraham and Sarah and their descendants were still, they died in faith, not having had all of the promises realized in their lives. Like Hebrews 11 tells us that, that they died in faith. They were looking forward to the city that has foundations. I love that part that it has foundations, like, because heaven, it talks about having foundations, right? So they're looking forward to this heavenly city that is different from where they lived. You know, they, they walked a thousand miles. They lived by faith they walked a thousand miles into the unknown and And it was in response to these big grandiose promises from God Genesis 12 God steps into their lives and he says I will I will I will And and they respond to those promises not them making promises to God, but them responding in faith to what God had promised to them. And they go, they go walking into the unknown. And I mean, if I'm Sarah, I'm thinking, I'm probably going to get pregnant on the way, right? And we're going to get there. It's going to be this big unclaimed territory. That's what I would have been thinking. And Abram's going to build us a house. We're going to start filling it with babies. This would be great. never having lived in, you know, living in a tent. The only property that they ever owned was her burial site, right? And so she did not get pregnant on the way. There's this extension. I like to think of God's promises like a set of parentheses, you know, in grammar. You have one parenthesis and you know the second one's coming, right? And that's how God's promises are. If we have the promise, we know the fulfillment is coming. Yeah, often there is this much wider stretch than we were imagining. And so when we start doubting, right? When we're in between that stretch and we start doubting, what God wants us to do is to look forward to that fulfillment and to live as though it will come true. And then I think the harm that we do to our own faith when we claim promises that don't belong to us is by, you know, we're putting down parentheses and we're messing with God's accuracy rate of keeping his promises, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's so good. When my kids were in high school, there was this guy they followed, do you know who Blake Harms is? I think I got his name right. He's from Hudsonville, which aren't you from Hudsonville? And he was a meteorologist. Yeah. Yeah. Well, back in high school, he started doing this thing where he would predict how many predict snow days like. Yeah. And he had this like 95 percent accuracy rate. And so they would watch, you know, are we going to have a snow day? Blake says we're going to have a snow day. You know, and now he, I think, is a meteorologist. But God has 100 percent accuracy rate. Right. He has 100 percent accuracy rate. If he says this is going to happen, you know that you know that you know it will. And yet, look at what happens when we start saying, I know the plans I have for you to prosper you. God says I'm going to prosper. And here, I am in debt, and I can't pay off my student loans. What we start doing is detracting from God's faithfulness, you know, his character. And we don't want to do that because that's not only bad for us, because we're supposed to be these people walking by faith, making these huge, taking huge risks in response, like Abraham and Sarah walking a thousand miles. That's who we're supposed to be. And if we're not sure that we're sure that we're sure that the fulfillment is coming, well, that hurts us. But it also, like I said, it misaligns or it maligns God's character. It detracts from his faithfulness. Yeah, I feel like we forget some of the harder stories in the Bible, too. I think we think about, you know, the Bible is about me. It's for me. It's these promises that I can claim. You know, you look at, you know, the apostle Stephan who gets stoned to death, right? Was that promise for him that he was going to prosper? And to some sense, yeah, but... Yeah, he will. He will prosper. He died, you know, and then you go, you know, going back to the gospel, like, do you think God's promises to himself, you know, does he keep his promises to himself? Well, you know, his son went to the cross and died. You know, was that, was that prospering? You know, yeah, absolutely. Yes. But it doesn't look like. Yeah, I mean that was anguish that was, you know, terrible, but yeah. One of the things I think we get wrong is just collapsing the story. You know, look at like if I looked at my Bible, like let's say this is Genesis 3, and then this is the first mention of the gospel, right? Well, the fulfillment of the gospel is not here's Matthew 27. It's like look at that. Yeah You know this represents a lot of thousands of years Right, and we like to collapse that down go from sin to the Savior all in the same Sentence the same song the same moment, right and we forget all of those thousands of years of waiting And where God did keep his promises. He did fulfill I mean Sarah got to experience just like 25 years of that waiting. But for us, it can feel like an eternity. So I think it's helpful to look at the ways that these people were waiting on God, and it looked as though this could, might never happen. And yet they lived by faith in between, you know, those parentheses, as we do. But, but so two things happen over time. Over time, we see God's faithfulness. You know, we don't learn his faithfulness in a minute. But the other thing is, it changes us in that time frame. When we are walking by faith, believing that this promise will come true, it changes us. Like I mentioned, we take great risks. Our lives have a different focus when we're living focused on God's promises and believing that they'll come true. So we've talked about getting the subject wrong, right Jeremiah or Jeremiah talking about Israel not us We've talked about the timeline one of the other ones that you brought up that I kind of want to go back to for a minute is the genre so Talking about a proverb versus a there's the promise, right? Would you mind talking a little bit more about that about how we because that the one you brought up is when I hear so Commonly because it's such a heartache for parents right when when your child goes astray from the Lord goes astray from you and your family. So you might talk a little bit more about how, how is a proverb and a promise, how are those two things different? Yeah, well, I mean, proverbs are generalities. It's like, these are the truisms of life. They're in general, these are the things that if God has set up his world in a certain way, that if you do this, this will be the outcome. And those are absolutely true. And yet it's different to live by the Proverbs versus to live by the promises. A promise, you know that you know this is going to happen. And so like, for me, I think it's been most helpful in those seasons of life. Like I said, we don't have a lot of promises for the here and now. So then how can I be shaped by God's promises and the waiting when I don't know if my prodigal son is going to come back. I don't know if my daughter who's struggling with her sexuality, which neither of those are true right now in my life, but I don't know if, you know, my husband is going to come back to our family. You know, when those, when I'm grappling with that sort of heartache as a woman, especially when the relationships in my life are strained, well, what do I do? There are, however, you know, I don't have any promises about the outcomes. I do have so many promises, and this is different than a principle in Proverbs. It's a promise that, for instance, God will be with me, that he hears my cries, that he will, I think one of the most important ones for me in the waiting is that I'm forgiven. And I know that maybe doesn't immediately sound like it would bring peace to your heart. But when you're grappling with the hardships of life, I think most often. I don't know if this is how it is with men, but with women, we're like, did I do it wrong? No, did I cause this? Did I get the formula wrong? I raised them this way, or I invested in my marriage or whatever it was. And so like to know that God sees me as a forgiven daughter and that this is not him punishing me because it's not going the way I hoped. Like, knowing I'm forgiven, it just is such, it's so, to cling to that and to know that, that does shape me. That gives me a whole different perspective on the things that I'm asking God for. Yeah. Yeah, along those lines, I think of Romans 8, 1, there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Yeah. So, when you think about a parent raising a child, none of us are perfect, so we know that our own imperfection played some kind of role. It doesn't mean it's your fault, it doesn't mean it's our fault that your child went astray, but of course none of us did parenting perfectly. But even in spite of that, we come to the gospel and we hear Romans 8 1 and we realize there is no condemnation. I am forgiven in Christ despite this outcome, regardless of how much or how little role I had to play in the whole thing. That is a truth, that is a promise to hold on us, that we are forgiven. It's an important thing to remember, especially for young families and for married couples. I've heard so many parents say when their child is acting up, well, that's your kid. Exactly. Your daughter is... I feel like I've heard that before. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've maybe heard that directed at me. That's because my kids' naughtiness is very similar to my naughtiness. So I think, you know, you bringing up young parents, I think. There's sometimes we twist it into like, I'm going to keep my promises to God as I'm raising this family, right? Versus being reminded that he's going to keep his promises to me. We just so often twist that and then when it doesn't go according to my plan, I feel like, oh, I let God down. I didn't keep my promise of being a good wife and mom or a good dad, you know, raising my family in the way that I was supposed to. And yet, like if God's promises hinged on our obedience, I mean, that would be a completely different story. Yeah. Right. Abraham and Sarah did interject some self-reliance into the story, didn't they, with Hagar? And yet, Galatians tells us very clearly this baby born to Hagar was not the child of promise. This was not the product of faith, of them trusting God to keep his promises. This is the product of self-reliance. And maybe it looked like, for a time, that they were keeping their promise to God, you know? It's so interesting in Genesis 16, you know, Genesis 12, God says, I will, I will, I will. Genesis 16, Sarah says, perhaps I can. Yeah. Right. So she's turning to self-reliance and for a while they have this baby. And I think it probably looked like they had done their contribution and that this baby was the result of God's promises and, you know, young parents, man, that was me. I was like, I am going to produce this godly family. And I'm going to, you know, like I was, oh my goodness, I so much self reliance. And so much heartache when my kids didn't follow the way that I had set out for them. And so much heartache when they turned and said, you know what, mom, you are the reason that I, you know, that I struggle with my faith in this. Oh my goodness. But that's self reliance for a time looks like me keeping my promises to God and yet God wants us to know that we know that we know that he keeps he's the promise keeper, not us in the in the equation. It's him keeping his promises to us and so that's that's why Hagar's baby was not the child of promise. God wanted them to know that this was something only he could produce in their lives. Yeah, that's so clearly in line with what our Christian faith is. I was talking with someone who used to be Muslim and they do evangelism to Muslims and one of the things that he brings up is talking about, you know, you can make a good Muslim by brandishing the sword, by, you know, coming down and willing it and, you know, you can teach obedience and you can make a good Muslim that way, but Christianity is the opposite. You can't. There's no way to do that. It's only by heart change. It's only by God. Only God can produce a child of Abraham, right? Even Abraham is there could not produce a child of Abraham. Only God could do that. That story always blows my mind. I recently talked about it in a teaching I did. But, you know, we try to normalize it a little bit. We say well historically that happened sometimes at that time, but it's crazy that you know, Abraham and Sarah are like we can't have a baby. Let's bring in another woman that you're going to go and be with in order to produce a child. I mean, that's a pretty crazy idea. Yeah, yeah. Sinful on a few different levels. Yeah, but I mean this child, I think it's important to tie it to the overarching meta narrative. Like this isn't God just promising a baby to a couple. He's promising the Savior to the world. And so if this is a story of self-reliance, I mean it tempts us into believing that we can keep promises to God, right? And that is just so common among us, like us taking on the burden of self-reliance or control as, you know, as parents. We're trying to control other people into the faith. And God wants us to know that self-salvation is not possible. And so that's what that extension on the timeline with that shows us is they were to the point where it was laughable to think that they would have a baby. And that's when God's like, yep, you can't, but nothing is impossible with me. And so it's, I think when we have little kids, I've, I've felt like it was really possible for me to, you know, like maybe like a Muslim would think to indoctrinate my child into the faith. It felt like, and I don't think it's wrong. I think we should have that mindset of we're training and we're teaching them the truth. And yet, that's maybe in one hand and then the other is complete and utter reliance on God. I can produce what might look like a godly child, but I cannot produce a true child of God. Yeah, you can't force someone to become a Christian. Yeah, it just doesn't work that way. And then back to the idea of promises, like we don't really have, I know this is so hard to grapple with as a parent, but I don't have a promise from God that every one of my kids will follow him. I don't have that promise. There is no formula. But what if there was? What if I did have that promise that if I do X, Y, and Z, my kids will become Christians? what kind of controlling, self-absorbed, obsessive parent would I become? You know, what angry mom, like, pointing at them, my Bible is, like, you will do this. Like, I mean, that's not who I want to be. That's not who God wants me to be. He wants me to be someone who's shaped by his promises of what he will do, where he says, I will, I will be faithful, you know? So that's, it's a hard thing, though, to grapple with. Yeah, before we go any further, we want to let you know about an opportunity that we have with Moody Publishers. But before we even get to that, I want to throw it to Shannon because I think you've got some news about Moody. Yeah, I'm so excited. I just signed a contract with Moody for my next book. Oh my gosh. So book number six I'm getting to work on with Moody. So thankful, I love Moody Publishers. Yeah, both Jon and I have been so blessed by Moody Publishers and the content that they've created. If you're looking to dive deeper into your faith and grow in wisdom, discover books that inspire change and transform with Moody Publishers. From trusted authors to fresh voices, Moody offers resources that equip you for life's journey with Christ. And right now we have an offer for you just for that's a good question listeners. If you use promo code RESOUND40, you'll get 40% off with your next purchase. Whether you're searching for devotional study guides or impactful reads, Moody Publishers has something for everyone. So don't miss out. Visit moodypublishers.com and use promo code RESOUND40 at checkout. Enrich your faith today. It's hard to, you know, teach someone to enjoy love and worship God by being angry at them, you know. It's, you know, such a great way to hurt someone's view of God by doing that. And I did that, you know. I mean, I'll be the first to say I did that. As parents, haven't we all? I mean, it's such a hard thing. But when you model how much you enjoy God, that's, I think, such a beautiful thing, not just for children, but for anyone we're around. And if I can just have my faith is in God, not myself, right? I have this peace and security and joy because I know I can't, but nothing is impossible with Him. Yeah. Yeah. So, you shared the story earlier of a couple and the woman had ended up in a wheelchair. So coming back to that couple and thinking about that, so how would you counsel them to try to reshape their thoughts on God's promises? How could you, how would you redirect their vision of God's promises? Yeah, so that's kind of what I was trying to do as I was talking to her. I said, like, what if you could get up out of that wheelchair? You know, so I think what I had in mind is like, let's picture the there and then. Like where all of God's promises will come to fruition. And what would it look like to live now the way we'll know with our eyes then, right? Now, faith is not seeing and yet believing. And so I think just imagining and, you know, believing, picturing, I think it's really helpful to picture the new earth, like picture the day where all sickness will be gone and where our bodies will be renewed and where our relationships will be restored and where we will be with God and we will be made new. We'll have no more sinful tendencies. Where you know, like a whole will be made right everything and it's not, you know, it's not the floating in the clouds thing. It's like it's the new earth where we'll get to experience all the things we missed out on here. Like that's one of our promises is that he will restore what we've missed out on here. And I don't know exactly how that works, you know, with opportunities lost, but we can trust that it's going to be good and it's going to be, we're going to know then when we look back at these long stretches of asking why God, why haven't you kept your promises? We're going to, when we're standing on the new earth and looking back at this life, we will know with all of our hearts that God has been faithful, that he has done everything that he said that he would, that he is a promise-keeping God. And that we won't have missed anything, right? That we'll have more than we could have ever imagined. Oh, it's so true, right? Yeah. Let me just ask, what would you say? Like, any thoughts that you would add to that as pastors? Someone who's going through something unthinkable, something really hard. Yeah, I think what you shared is beautiful. I think that's the perspective you want to try to encourage. And in my experience, you know, myself going through some hard stuff, talking with other people who go through some hard stuff, I think we're all sort of ready to hear that at different levels. You know, I think sometimes somebody's just not ready to hear certain parts of that. So it sort of takes a journey to get there. Tim Keller has an awesome book on suffering that was really helpful to me in the midst of some hard stuff. I'm trying to think of the name of it off the top of my head, but Keller's book on suffering, but he kind of tries to take a few different perspectives at it and just think it through from different lenses. Like you've had, like you've done, you know, what if it, you know, what if you did have it, what would that do to the way you think about, you know, how do you think about it if you, you know, from the end, from eternity, from the new heavens, the new earth, some of those different perspectives. One of the things I've tried to try to capture in my own mind is just the overall timeline of Scripture of creation, fall, redemption, and just remembering that I'm in the broken part, the messed up part in the middle. You know, we got the Garden of Eden in the beginning, it was right, it was perfect, it was good. At the end, when Jesus returns, it'll be right and perfect and good. And it's not an accident that I'm in this broken, messed up part in the middle. This is part of the timeline. This is how the story works, is that we're between Genesis 3 and the end of Revelation, you know? The world is broken and sinful, and things are not the way they're supposed to be, but someday they will become right. So, I don't know, for me, that's really helpful, just to put myself in the right spot on the timeline and realize where I'm at. Yeah, yeah, for sure. My husband I went to this restaurant recently and on his birthday and I Asked to use this coupon that they have for half off the entree well It wasn't the right it wasn't his birthday, right and I didn't know how to be on his birthday But what what if like in that interaction? I like started getting out my phone and leaving a Yelp review. Like this is really bad, you know, this restaurant, they don't keep their promises. Well, I just got the date wrong, right? And so I think getting, yeah, finding my place in the overarching meta-narrative, like sometimes I just think we get the date wrong, right? We acclaim these promises and they will come true. There is a second coming, right? And the first coming- And that's a promise we can, you know, bank, right? Yes, that is one of the biggest promises. He's coming back. But Jesus, you know, he did heal people and he did restore relationships while he was here. And there were like little appetizers for the kingdom. And so we get tastes of it now. And he does sometimes do miraculous things in our lives. But all of the fruition will will come in that there and then. Yeah. Would you say that that, maybe even part of getting the date wrong, is how we view Scripture? Yeah. You know, seeing the Bible maybe as a story about us rather than a story that we get to have the opportunity to be a part of. Yeah, well, I mean, if you're living in the broken world trying to create the new earth out of the broken pieces, right? That's, I mean, isn't that sort of egocentric? Isn't that sort of like you're the main character in the story and you've only got like 70 years or so to get this story on track, right? But if you can like lose your life, you know, Jesus says you lose your life to gain it in part of this give yourself up to this meta narrative, right? Where creation, fall, redemption, new creation. Well, then your life has so much more to anticipate, so much. And it's not about you. It's about enjoying him. And you know what? One more thing I just thought of is when we get to the there and then, we won't need faith anymore. Like that's when we'll have the sight. The only time that we get to walk by faith is now. This is, we only have a few short years to walk by faith and to believe that it's true that God will keep his promises. Yeah. For me, I feel like that concept right there is really helpful to me to just realize that something is being done that matters during this hard time. That yes, God has a meaning and a purpose for my suffering. And also one of those meanings and purposes is that I'm being shaped and transformed. My faith is growing, or I think of how James chapter one says it, the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So for me, just that word steadfastness has always meant a lot to me that that I just try to remind myself that's what God is doing in the midst of this hard, hard time, that something is being developed in me that matters, that's important, that wouldn't happen any other way. I know that's valuable. Yeah, that's one of the things I really love about Sarah's story is we see this huge shift in her character in somewhere between Genesis 18 and Genesis 21. 18 is when the visitors come for lunch and they say Sarah will have a son within a year. And then Genesis 21, she has the baby. Well, but she's laughing in the tent at the idea of having a baby. And then by 21, she has the baby. So what shifts? Well, Hebrews 11, 11 says that by faith, Sarah herself conceived a son, had the power to conceive a son, when she considered him faithful who had promised. And so what changed was her considering. Like she didn't consider, she thought the promise had already been kept, you know, by her self-reliance. She saw herself, you know, if you picture those parentheses, she's on the outside looking in, right? She felt like irrelevant to the story, she's worthless. Like having a child at age 89, that's ridiculous. Well, something changed between her laughing, scoffing in the tent and holding that baby. And what changed was her belief that God would do what he promised. Yeah. She took a huge risk. You know, I mean, can you imagine saying to your husband at age 89, after a lifetime of infertility, want to try for a baby? You know, because God said so, like that took, that was a lot of risk and it took a lot of great faith. Yeah. You know, in seasons of hardship, the question that is helpful for me is, you know, what if this doesn't get better? What if this gets worse? Will I still be obedient? Will I still follow? Like, you know, I think a good question to ask yourself before hardship happens is, what if part of God's plan for me is for him to destroy my life. What if it's for me to lose everything? What if that, in that act, God is most glorified? Would I still be faithful to him? Would I still follow him? Would I still love that kind of God? And I think that's a really good question to ask yourself. It's a hard one, you know. Would I still be faithful if I lost my whole family if I lost my health if I You know, whatever it is. I think that's a it's a good question to See where our idols are but also to prepare ourselves for when a hardship comes Yeah, it's not a fun question to think about but well, it's it's sort of like inevitable. Don't you think I mean, yeah Life is not gonna all it's not like it's not gonna all get built up to this beautiful culmination moment on your deathbed. You don't know it's death, right? So, it's not going in the right direction. And so, but not only contemplating on the front end, but all throughout, right? Am I gonna still be faithful? Am I going to be faithful now? Am I going to trust that God will be faithful to me in this, even if, right? That's a really good point. Yeah, it's not a crazy scenario. I mean, that's what happened to our hero, our Savior. That's what happened to Jesus. Yeah. I just always like to ask that question. What if it gets worse? Like, are we going to reject the faith? Am I going to just go, yeah, nah, this is too much for me? And you also said, what if God decides that, you know, I think we like to use the language God allowed this. You know, he allowed this to happen. But the Bible doesn't allow us that, you know, that sort of, you know, softening of it. Joseph, like, look at the story of Joseph, he says God three times, I think it's in Genesis 38, he says, God sent him. That's an active verb, right? He sent him there with good intentions and yet was Joseph gonna be faithful every at every point of the story, you know, he has these it goes up and down the narrative But yeah, I think Joseph had to ask that question Hundreds of times. Yeah, am I going to? Yeah, we've got it very clearly at the end of the story right in Genesis 50 You meant it for evil and God meant it for good. Same word. So the brothers, in the same way that they meant, intended, premeditated and then carried out this plan to put Joseph in a pit and then sell him into slavery. In the same way, God meant it, he planned it, he executed a plan for Joseph to be sent into slavery, but ultimately for it to be for good. Yeah, I mean, that's so clear at the cross, right? And I think it's easier to somehow, easier to say that God did that in the case of Jesus. Like, it's almost like the exception, right? Because he had salvation in mind. But like, yeah, we see it. There's a consistency in Joseph's life and in so many others where we have to back up and consider the overarching meta-narrative. And that's where we see, yes, our God is faithful and we can trust him. Amen. So Shannon, as we are wrapping up, love to ask where people could find their book or if there are any projects that you're working on that you're allowed to share with us. Oh, sure. If you're working on anything that we should be looking forward to. from Sarah on Fear and Faith, Genesis 12 through 21. But I also have a free download that you can do of, it's called Praying the Promises, Pray the Promises, where I've kind of like delineated those different lists of promises for the here and now, promises for the there and then, and inviting you to just fill in the blanks with what your situation entails and praying back to God what he has promised to you. So I'd love for you to check those out. And you can find both of those at Shannonpopkin.com. Yeah, and we'll link everything that you just talked about in our show notes. So the free download and where to go to get that. Yeah, yeah. And also a series on Sarah at Live Like It's True. So if you're interested in some of the stuff we talked about. Yeah, another great podcast at Resound Media. Yeah, at resoundmedia.cc . Well, thanks so much, Shannon. We appreciate it a lot. Yeah, thanks. It's been a great conversation. Thanks everybody for listening. We hope you all have a great week You can always find resound media at resoundmedia.cc or follow like subscribe on social media. Thanks everybody. Have an awesome week!

PODCAST That's a Good Question Spiritual Inquiries: Biblical Insights on Meditation, Hypnosis, and Upholding Beliefs in Relationships May 7, 2024 Jon Delger & Logan Bailey Listen to this Episode So Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc . That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I serve as a pastor as well as be part of this show, and I'm here today with Pastor Logan. Howdy. Great to see you Pastor Logan and also for the very first time introducing him with this title. Hey Pastor Mitchell. Hey everyone Mitch has been serving at Peace Church on staff and as a producer, but was it last Sunday or the Sunday before? Yep, you got ordained as a pastor. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so now you know all the answers to all these questions. Yep, when I pray it matters more all that kind of stuff. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Oh, nice. Awesome. Well, hey, we're excited today to have an episode that I'm just gonna call like a mailbag episode. We're gonna combine together a bunch of questions about very different topics. We're gonna talk about things like yoga, hypnosis, and some other stuff, relationship advice, things like that. Yeah. Should be good. Yeah. So let's get into it. Yeah, ready for the first question. Here it is. Where does yoga fit in your thoughts? Should Christians participate? Can stretching positions be done without the Buddhist spiritual aspect? So I've got a couple questions just to start off with. How about we just say like, what is yoga? Where did it originate? And why might it be bad? Why raise the question? I think that last question is really key. There's the crowd that's listening right now that's thinking, how could it be bad? Yeah. And there's some right now thinking, I've looked into it, how could it be good? Right? And so I think it is good for us to dialogue a bit about like, how could it be bad? What would be the concerns for a Christian to say, I don't want to have anything to do with what yoga is. Well, I just don't want to because I don't like to stretch. I'm kind of out of shape. I asked Brian, producer Brian, if he's ever stretched before, be careful. Well, so my understanding is from, I'm no expert in the field, but a little bit of research, my understanding is that the word yoga actually means union and that the idea kind of originally was to, you know, it comes from Buddhists, it's the idea is to unite with the greater sort of spiritual realm, the Brahman. You know, Buddhism is a pantheistic religion and so God is in everything and so through yoga, you know, we can kind of prepare ourselves to become spiritually a part of God and enter into the divine and some of that kind of stuff. So I think… Is that Hindu too? Maybe. I'll be honest, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know. But the Eastern... Eastern religion, yeah, yes, yes, totally. So I think originally it has some very spiritual connotations, you know, kind of combining the physical with the spiritual. But in the U.S., I think we have, a lot of people practice it just as a physical exercise kind of thing. Yeah, I guess there are, when we use the word, people use it differently and hear it differently. And I think those would be the two most accepted uses of it. One party just thinking, I thought yoga was just certain stretches. Another party thinking, well, Eastern pantheistic monism, like unity is the focus of the religious belief and yoga is the way to be united. You know, there's like that deep religious background to it too. Those are the two primary ways people use the word. And there's some people that don't have any realization that there could be another usage of the word that they're using. Yeah, so I think basically what I've said to people, so I've been asked this question before, and basically what I've said is, I think, Christian's asking, can I do yoga? And I guess what I would say is just don't call it yoga. You know, if you want to do stretching, great, you know, stretching can be healthy and, and um, you know, I've, I've learned some, I do some stretches in the morning cause I'm getting a little older and it's a little tighter in the morning when I get up out of bed. So, uh, I do some stretching, some of which I've learned from yoga videos and stuff like that. But you know, don't participate in the spiritual aspects of it. That's bad. So, uh, one quick story I had, uh, I had a pastor friend mentioned to me that they were, he told me about, he engaged this, he had somebody in his church who wanted to start a Christian yoga class at their church. And he just explained to them, you can have a Christian stretching class, we're not gonna call it Christian yoga. And I think that gets to the point of it, is that if you wanna do stretching and learn some stuff from people who do what they call yoga, fine, but yeah, don't participate in the spiritual aspects of that whole thing. The best practical advice I think we can give for sure. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I just I've known people that have heard there's a religious side to it and they've got what I had no idea. I've also heard people that have an Eastern background that have converted to Christianity. They have family members that are Hindu or Buddhist and things and they've heard that yoga could mean something non-religious and they've gone what I thought it could only mean something religious. And so there's people on both sides of that. I do think practically speaking, that is the best advice we could offer is, hey, let's just not use the word yoga, call it stretching. And if you wanna learn from people that are just doing the stretching side of it, there's maybe some valid stuff there about muscles and how they stretch and things. But absolutely stay away from the religious pantheistic side of it for sure. So let me ask this question. Could a Christian go to a yoga class at their gym, sign up for that, if they're not participating in the religious aspects and rejecting that aspect of it? I have some scripture I'd like to read that I think would be a good answer. Romans 14. I'm going to skip around Romans 14 a bit. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. And let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Basically trying to stay over matters of indifference. I've heard it said, I read R.C. Sproul actually recently talk about matters of indifference, and there's sometimes differences of opinions. We don't want to unnecessarily quarrel over things that is a matter of conscience. Because Romans 14, verse 12, each of us will give an account to himself, to God, of himself to God. So I think the most practical thing is let's try to avoid some of the religious stuff. So if someone can do that and avoid the religious stuff, maybe that's okay. But if you can't avoid the religious stuff, then maybe it's best not to I think yeah If you're going to a class and they're saying what one now, let's you know participate in these You know Religious practices and we're you know doing these things in order to connect with our inner. I'm out, you know, it's like okay Maybe that's not a great one. But if it's a maybe if it's a yoga class that is Physically only doing stretching and that's what that meant by it. Yes Yes. Yeah, I would just go back to that. I agree. Yeah, I mean, I've seen some yoga stuff where the person's saying, all right, now we're going to do this move and we're going to breathe in. And as you breathe in, picture yourself joining with the divine, you know, that kind of stuff. That's just not the stuff you want to be a part of. Yeah. All right, let's jump into our next question. I believe hypnosis is wrong. Not being in control of our own thoughts and mind would be against scripture. Having been in counseling, we did participate in mindfulness slash breathing exercises, focusing my mind on things above. Breathing with the breath of life has given me a controlled manner to calm myself, repeating positive and biblical things to calm myself and change my negative and anxious thoughts. For me, there's a difference, and these things have helped me greatly as a trauma survivor. I want to be sure that these are not dabbling in the spiritual world. What would you guys say to that? We'll be right back after this break. Hi, I'm Elizabeth, one of the co-hosts of Mom Guilt, a podcast with new episodes every Monday. Mom Guilt is a podcast about the daily struggles of motherhood. Stephanie and I share real experiences of Mom Guilt and how we have found freedom from that guilt through the gospel. Listen to us on resoundmedia.cc or wherever you find podcasts. I think right away we are spiritual being like the spiritual there's a side of reality that's spiritual so you know dabbling in spiritual isn't necessarily wrong but what this person means is dabbling in like demonic occult sort of thing. Yeah. Did you write notes on this? I read ahead on some of the notes you wrote and you had a really good point. I don't know if it was you or Pastor John. Just the difference between Christian meditation and Buddhist meditation. Yeah. I saw one of you wrote that down. That's a really good point to make. Yeah. I was just going to ask, what is the difference between that because oftentimes we hear meditation or mindfulness and that can mean something in an eastern context, but also the Bible talks about this idea of biblical meditation and, you know, what's the difference between those things? Can we meditate? Is that an okay thing? Absolutely. Blessed is the one who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night. Yeah, right. Meditation is awesome. It's good. Yeah, as I read the question, I've got it right here in front of me, is I sort of see two different things. You know, talking about hypnosis and the person says they believe it's wrong. And I, yeah, I agree. I think, yeah, my understanding of hypnosis is that you're putting yourself in a state in which you can be deeply influenced by something else to even, I mean, I was once at a large event, I think I was in high school, and saw mass hypnosis happen. I don't know if it was real or not. I asked some of the guys afterwards who were part of it, and they claimed it was real. I don't know. Yeah. But where people are being hypnotized and doing things that they normally wouldn't do, acting like animals, making fools of themselves. So yeah, I think scripture pretty clearly doesn't want you to open yourself up to that kind of influence. I even just think of the fruit of the spirit, Galatians 5, says that self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. So being in control of yourself is something God wants for us. The person filled with the spirit is in control of themselves. They're not opening themselves up to demonic influence or even the influence of somebody else without your ability to discern and filter those actions. So that's one thing I see in the question, but also I think mindfulness or breathing exercises doesn't have to be the same thing as hypnosis. I'd say those can be two very different things. I think some breathing exercises for somebody who maybe struggles with anxiety or something like that can be a great thing. I mean, I just personally, yeah, there are moments that I feel stressed out and I will stop and I'll say, I'm just going to take some deep breaths for a few minutes. I don't have any specific maybe exercises that I do, but I would say that's me just sort of taking a pause and you call that meditation, you call it breathing exercises, whatever you want, but I think those things can be really helpful. I would say if you're a deep diver also, breathing exercise is a very good thing for you. A deep diver. It's very good. Fair point. But I mean, I think, you know, everyone enjoys, you know, deep breathing. That's a good calming thing and that's, yeah, that's something that we can, I think a lot of contemporary hypnosis too isn't this kind of older idea of hypnosis, maybe that we see on TV and stuff like that. But a lot of modern, what they call hypnosis is really just getting people into a very relaxed state so that they can maybe remember things better and have that experience in a therapeutic session where you're not under a trance, you're still in control, but maybe you're laying down on a couch and you have headphones on, or something where it's just very relaxed. And I think that's different than, hey, I'm out of control, I don't remember what just happened, I was acting like an animal, versus, no, I was just laying down and I could remember more. Right. Well, and the goal is important, too, so this kind of actually goes back to the yoga thing shares what I would say is a very godly perspective on meditation, which is they're repeating positive and biblical things to calm themselves and change negative or anxious thoughts. Yeah, I mean, memorize scripture and in moments of anxiety, pause, breathe, and repeat scripture. That's a great thing to do. I have two verses I'd like to read that I think are really valuable to the discussion. and just to make that point of kind of a some people would consider meditation kind of in an Eastern Hindu Buddhist way which would be clear your mind empty your mind Buddhism is all about kind of removing desire because by removing desire you remove suffering whereas a Christianity is like let's go through the suffering yeah Jesus went through suffering for us Buddhism meditation is let's empty our mind nirvana is basically a state of nothingness, right? Christian meditation is let's focus on something godly and good. Christian meditation is filling yourself with something not emptying yourself of something. Yeah, absolutely. So the two verses I think of is Colossians 3, 2, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. I think that complements really well with Philippians 4, 8. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, even if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Yeah, yeah. And it's clear that that's what Christ did too, right? He filled himself up with Scripture to the point when he was on the cross. That's what he bled out. I mean, when he was under the most scrutiny of his life, the most anguish of his life, he cried out scripture, right? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's a quote back to Psalms. He's quoting and going back even in his most intense moments. And that's why Christian meditation and filling yourself with scripture is great. Yeah, and to address kind of the last sentence there of the question of you want to make sure you're not dabbling in the spiritual world. With both yoga and hypnosis, that is a real danger. If you're opening yourself up to being influenced and you're not able to discern and filter the influence coming into you, then you have just opened yourself up to the ability to be influenced by the enemy. Ephesians 6 tells us that our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual forces, evil spiritual forces. And so don't give them the opportunity to do that. Yeah. Reminds me of test the spirits. Yeah. Just about that. Like we don't blindly go into influences. Yeah. All right. So next question. We've gotten a couple of questions and we get these questions quite frequently about the end times, tribulation, rapture, that kind of stuff. And so we do try to do an episode on that every few months. I think I was looking back at the schedule recently and we have. We've done an episode on that every few months. And so we can't keep doing those episodes all the time. So I do want to point people back. If you've been asking questions about the end times, tribulation, rapture, that kind of stuff, February 12 was the last episode we did on that. Also, if you go to Peace Church or if you listen to our sermons at peacechurch.cc , we are in the midst of a series right now called The Church Never Preaches On. And we do have one of the episodes in that series, one of the Sundays, is gonna be on the end times. So that's coming too. So if you're looking for resources on that, I wanna point you just to those things. Yeah, that's great. All right, next question. My significant other and I have been together for almost five years. I've deepened my relationship with God over the last year and have attended every online service on Sundays since the beginning of the year. I would like to attend in person, but he does not want me to go and doesn't want me to go alone because it would quote unquote look weird. I told him although I would love for him to join me, I don't feel weird attending alone. Am I doing the right thing? I pray for him daily multiple times a day. Often I send him a text of what I've prayed for in regard to him. He has sent me texts on hard days asking for me to pray for him or that he has prayed and felt God actively did something that made him believe more. I'm hopeful that without pressuring him, slash giving him an ultimatum, he will find the love slash guidance of God and seek more of it. He will see the changes in me and desire to want the same lifestyle. Who doesn't want all the love and guidance from Jesus? It's the best thing ever. I can remember feeling lonely and unfulfilled. Now I have a best friend and his name is Jesus. We talk all the time. I never feel lonely or unfulfilled. I always feel guided and seen and heard. Should I do anything different other than live my life through Christ, pray for my significant other, and send him those prayers? That's an awesome question. It really is. Thanks for reading the whole thing, Mitch, because I think it was worth hearing the whole thing. Yeah, that's awesome. I love the heart and the direction. I wanna, right away at the beginning, actually jumping off point, I think there's actually two very different answers I would give to this question, depending on a stipulation in here that I caught. There's kind of more than one question, even, in it, too. Sure, yeah, yeah. But right away at the beginning, it says, my significant other. So I just wanna pause there and just say, my answer to this question is totally different depending on what that means. So if we're talking about your spouse, somebody you're married to, we're gonna go, I want to go ahead and address the question both ways, but we'll talk about passages like 1 Peter 3, 1 Corinthians 7, and what it says, what the Bible says to somebody who is married to somebody who's an unbeliever, and how to, and my short answer would be that you're doing all the right things of trying to live a godly life, be a great example, trying to just gently just pray for the person, point the person to Jesus. That's beautiful and awesome. And there's a lot of people that I know that are in that situation and it's tough, it's challenging, but it's a beautiful thing. Now on the flip side, I just want to say if my significant other means a boyfriend or a girlfriend, then my answer is very different. If you are dating somebody who is not a believer, but you are a committed believer, then I would say that you're in a spot you really don't want to be in. I think Scripture is pretty clear about the fact that Christians should be partnering themselves with other Christians, especially the most important partnership in your life, your marriage. You don't want to be unequally yoked, as 2 Corinthians 6 says. That passage talks about partnerships between Christians and unbelievers. And you don't want to be partnered closely, that closely, like a marriage, with somebody who doesn't have the same values, doesn't have the same beliefs. Going in a different direction. Yeah, you're headed in two totally different directions in life. You're pulling at each other in ways that are going to just hurt you. Yeah. Yeah, but this is also if you are dating someone or engaged to someone who isn't actively wanting to lead you in this way This also is the best circumstance for you because you haven't made a covenant yet with that, right? Totally, that's heartbreaking for someone to hear but I think it's the council that the Bible would have us give. Yeah, yeah The person asking this question might be shocked to hear us say this and I get that and that's hard, but we say it because we care about you and we don't want you to end up in a lifelong commitment. That's what marriage is, a lifelong commitment that is going to be extremely painful where you're going to spend your whole life pulling somebody in a direction that they don't want to go on their own. And you'll be pulled in a different direction. Yeah. That is the best for you. Yeah. I'd also say anyone who's telling you not to go to church is asking you to break what God has commanded us, right? Right. Hebrew says that we should not neglect to meet together as that is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near, right? We are commanded to meet together as Christians, to meet together as—so whether, even if this is your spouse and someone's commanding you not to meet, this is an area where you can say, no, I have a higher command and I can, this is something that I can obey the one who I must submit to in all things and that's my God. That's the point, exactly. Like wives are commanded to submit and respect their husbands. Husbands to love their wives. And if your spouse is very explicit about like, I don't want you to go to that movie or that rodeo or that boys night or whatever it's like yeah it's not like because you want to go you have a right love your spouse well mm-hmm but to for your spouse to say don't go to that thing in place that God has told his covenant people to go to on a weekly basis and worship him yeah that is where it would come down to you have a higher calling to submit to God's law and God's Word and so if this anyone yeah, I just got interjected Is this a regular conversation in your household that your wife doesn't want you go to the rodeo? No, I just was thinking of like the did like a No, I did not see that example coming I don't know Kentucky Derby was recently I was just thinking of horses. I don't think they call And bulls and whatnot only trying to think of manly cowboy things uh... Jon way to take a look at the reality i think that i could think about all of my faces are at that's what i have a very creative guy yeah i love that you are not a very very very very very very very very very very yes and i'm trying to get better examples i can't think of a very husband says you don't want to to that underwater basket. Exactly. Yeah. So, I was on a roll. Yeah. Point being, if you are someone that consistently is watching the online service, I think that's awesome. I would say, I hope you feel encouraged and invited to come and worship in person. I do think that's something that God would want for you. If someone's listening, and they're actually unable due to physical needs or something like that to come to a service, then we would love to know. We could have a care, you know, one of our zone elders come, or someone from our care team, our care pastor, come and visit you and make sure that you still get a taste of the community that we're meant to have as Christians. Yeah, and now that I can say this because I am a pastor, but pastorally, this would be another thing is I think I've seen too many women in bad relationships with bad men who aren't going to lead them and they feel this weight, this pressure like I cannot find, I won't be able to find someone else. And I think that's such a lie that Satan wants especially young women to believe or just women in general who are in these types of relationships saying, well this is the best I'll be able to get. I promise you, that's not the case. In fact, even being single, rather than being actively led to do something that isn't godly and to go into a different way would be a better situation than to be in a bad relationship like this. And I truly believe that there will be someone even better than this. And there's two ways that God goes about that right he says either find someone new or you know changing the heart of people who are against him and so obviously that's our prayer that this guy would you know have his heart changed and be transformed by the gospel and right this would be a godly man who could lead lead someone but I also don't want to leave a wife and kids. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, you talk about kids like that's the hard part. You think about getting married to someone who isn't a Christian or isn't willing to go to church with you. Man, I couldn't imagine now if you have kids, how much more complicated does that get? Right. You know, this is the family that you're a part of. That is the most important is the family of God and then the physical family that you're a part of next. And so that can be such a hard thing when those two things aren't the same. That's really good stuff, guys. So let's give- Even the rodeo part. Even that part. Even the rodeo thing. I thought it was great. I loved it. My favorite part, actually. So let's talk quickly about if the person is talking about a spouse. Let's just say that that's the case. So I want to just read a passage. This is 1 Peter 3. So this was not an unfamiliar idea situation in the New Testament. The Bible addresses it in a couple of places. So here's one. 1 Peter 3 says, Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word. Okay, so it's talking about wives who are married to a husband that's not a believer. So even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Just by the actions of a godly wife. Yeah. So countless men have come to Christ because of a godly wife. Totally, totally. And it's not saying that you can't use words, by the way. I think some of the things that were listed in the question of praying for them, offering, discussing about going to church, that's all really good stuff. But yeah, just being a great godly wife who loves her husband, who offers prayers. I underlined a couple things in the question here, just that the question asker said that the husband sent texts asking for prayer at a certain point. That's a beautiful turning point. If you've got some kind of relationship with an unbeliever, I've had some of those friendships where all of a sudden it finally does turn to where they're asking for prayer. I mean, something's happening in their heart at that point. That's an awesome thing. Yeah. It's awesome. It's also beautiful to, I can hear the passion in this question asker. You know, she is just loving what Jesus has done in her life, you know, saying, I've got this best friend and it's clear that this, this love is just pouring out of her. And so I want to just commend, like, continue to bring that joy into every relationship that you have. I mean, that's the kind of beauty that is so attractional to people who don't know the gospel. Cool, yeah. Keep after it. Yeah, and this is really hard, but you know. Yeah, and to the questioner, please reach out. And we'd love to talk more with you specifically about your situation. Either a pastor or our women's director and coordinator would love to connect with you as well. All right, let's jump into this next question. What is the biblical stance on loving people who sin or aren't good for you and setting boundaries with them? Quote-unquote, love like Jesus is everywhere and it seems unclear because Jesus did in fact have boundaries. What do you guys think? And a part of me thinks like if you love like Jesus, you're actually going to have a lot of enemies. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Oh man. I think this is an awesome question. I actually frequently will tell, part of my role is to work with student ministry and young adult ministry and I'll tell both in those two ministries, I'll tell them, I think it's probably most wise for you to have an 80, 20, 90, 10 ratio. If like 80 or 90% of the people I spend the most time with are Christians and 10 or 20% aren't. And it takes a, I actually say it takes a very special person to have a 70, 30 ratio. Yeah. Or a 60, 40. And don't assume that you are that person. Like we need to be primarily influenced by our Christian community and loving and being loved by our Christian community so that we can be filled up to then go and spread the good news and share the gospel. And you mean specifically like your close friends, right? Because somebody might spend a lot of their time at work with unbelievers. But you're saying like 80% of friends, people who are influenced. In terms of your influence, what's the 90 or 80% of your influences? Like the quantity of influence. Yeah, yeah. The weight of it, yeah. So, those are good boundaries. I think that's the start of the conversation about boundaries. Yep. So, what should we do with people who are sitting in, aren't good for you and sitting, how do we set boundaries? What's another way that we could set boundaries with them? I really do love this question. There's so many ways we can take it. And I think you almost alluded to this, if someone, someone might say they're a Christian, but they never go to church, or someone might say they're a Christian, but they don't follow the word and they're actively living in sin. The Bible would instruct us, like assume that they say who they are, believe it, and go to them and say, like, hey, as a brother, or as a sister, I want to bring this to you and point out sin in your life that I'm concerned about. And you can do that lovingly and there's more guidance on that in scripture obviously of making sure that you check the log in your eye and everything. But if that happens and they continually live in sin, the guidance would be to treat them like a non-believer. Yeah, this is a caveat to the start of the conversation as well, yeah. Which means that they're now somebody that you're trying to share the gospel with, turn to Jesus. They're seen as the 10 or 20%, not the 80%. Yeah. I think there are two extremes on this, right? There's a, hey, I'm never going to put any boundaries up with people and let everyone and anything influence me. And then there's the other end that says, you know, oh, you know, the Bible says that, you know, we should avoid such people from 1st Timothy 3 and like the list that that goes before that is like You know, that's that could be anyone right and both groups will claim their loving like Jesus correct, right? So so how do we avoid maybe both of those extremes? to find the truth here well, I think Yeah It's rightly recognized that the quote-unquote love like Jesus is an easy to say motto without a lot of clarity as to what to do. It's easy to self-define too. Yeah, sure. I'm going to love like Jesus. What does that mean? What that means is what I say it means. Yeah, there's a lot of people today using that to make up their own version of what that means. I'm looking for an example, I think of Mark chapter one, by the way, of Jesus setting boundaries. Jesus retreats from healing people and preaching and all that kind of stuff to go alone to be with his Father. So, Jesus does give good examples, I think, of saying, yeah, there's a really helpful ministry that I could do by continuing to stay here and heal people all day and all night, but that's not what I'm going to do. The best thing for me is to go spend time with my Father. So, I think that's a great example. Yeah. So like you said, there are two extremes and maybe I don't have a super perfect answer to this question, but I think maybe the easiest thing to do is just to rule out the extremes. Yeah. That if you spend all of your time, all of your closest friends or majority of your closest friends are people who are don't love Jesus and are leading you in the wrong direction. That's not healthy. If the opposite is true and all of your friends are people that you go to church with that are Christians, then you're existing in a bubble and you're not on mission. So either one of those extremes is not where you wanna be. You talked about this preaching, it was really good. Yeah, I just got to preach about this recently on Sunday. I said actually in West Michigan, where we're from here, it is easier I think for us to end up in a bubble. A lot of people are born here, raised here, they stay here. So if you get involved in a church and you have a great Christian family, then it's really easy to just, the people that you spend time with during the week, on the weekends, year after year, you can end up in a Christian bubble. And if that's the case, then I think what I said was go to a park or somewhere and make new friends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, if you have a friend that is in that 80, 90 Christian part of your life, the gospel is what you should be chasing after with them. That can be the guiding factor in your relationship with them and that can help set boundaries. And then if they're in the 10, 20, if they're in your friend group and they don't know Jesus, then share the gospel with them. In either way, the gospel is the thing guiding us and how our relationships are oriented and the boundaries that we set. Yeah. I also think Paul set a really good example for us. He got arrested and then he got to proclaim that to, you know, a judge and maybe that's a good option for you if you're in trouble with the law a lot. No, I'm just kidding. You're saying if you're having a problem sharing the gospel, you should get arrested first. Get arrested first. Okay. Yeah. I got you. Very interesting advice. Uh-huh. This is Master Mitchell, by the way. It's 2024, I feel like I have to say maybe this is a joke. I just want to be clear. I'm joking. Good point, yeah. Awesome, well hey, great questions, everybody. Thanks so much for sending those in. Mitch, Logan, thanks for the conversation, guys. Great stuff, great biblical answers to these questions. Hey, you can always subscribe to That's a Good Question at resoundmedia.cc or wherever you find podcasts. You can also follow Resound Media on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest. Have an awesome week. You can find That's a Good Question at resoundmedia.cc or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Four Staff Values Leadership Jon Delger Multiplication Pastor Peace Church Published On: November 16, 2023 Whenever we hire a new staff member, the final interview is with the Executive Pastor (me) and the Lead Pastor. This meeting is actually less of an interview and more of an interactive speech. Our goal in this meeting is to clearly communicate, one last time, who we are and what it will be like to join this team. We are strictly focused on the most important indicator of success for our staff: culture-fit. My contribution to this conversation is to share four descriptors of our staff. I have shared these four descriptors many times over the last few years, and I think they are values worth sharing. They may transfer directly to your situation or they may inspire thoughts of how to describe your own staff culture. 1) Truth in Love In my experience, most churches fall to one side or the other of the truth-love spectrum. On the one hand, some churches preach the truth loudly, clearly, and heartlessly. They have their doctrinal i’s dotted and t’s crossed. But from sitting in their pews, you would think they care nothing for the world or for helping the world come to understand and appreciate those truths. On the other hand, some churches try so hard to be seen as preaching and demonstrating love that they capitulate to a worldly definition of love that lacks truth. They work tirelessly to care for people and to avoid offending people. But from sitting in their Sunday worship experiences, you wouldn’t know that the Bible teaches some things that are very offensive to our world. At this church, we seek to live out both truth and love the way Jesus did. We speak the truth loud, clear, and unapologetically. We believe that actually, the most loving thing you can do for someone is to tell them the truth. We also care deeply for people and want to make sure that if they are offended, it is by the truth of the Bible and not our careless words or tone. We bend over backward to extend loving hospitality in any way we can. Not only is this true on Sundays, but this is also true in the office. We do not lie to each other about performance or results. We tell the truth and face hard truths. At the same time, we seek to be one of the most encouraging places you could work. We smile, we say please and thank you, we write encouragement cards, we stop and pray for each other, and we drop what we are doing to pick up a teammate who is down. 2) Hopelessly Optimistic I have been part of some workplaces that are cynical and I have been part of some that are downright pessimistic. When management rolls out a new initiative or goal, the staff rolls their eyes - ‘Here we go again, the strategy-to-inspire of the week.’ When things go wrong, they get down and give up. That’s not how we operate here. The people who work here believe in their bones that what we do matters eternally and they would give their right arm to see us accomplish our goals. If an outsider sat in some of our staff meetings, they might think we are crazy. We talk about serious challenges and outlandish possibilities, and then we pray, clap, cheer, and go do it. When things go wrong, we don’t bicker and blame, we solve it and move forward with joy. We are hopelessly, if not crazily, optimistic. 3) Act our Size You may have heard it said - Act your age. Well, we have another slogan here - act our size. Churches of different sizes act differently. Events or systems that make sense for a church of 200, don’t make sense for a church of 2000, and vice-versa. One size is not better than another, they are simply different, and leaders need to recognize that. In a smaller church, you might hold an after-church potluck where everyone brings a dish to share, and everyone chips in to help set up tables and chairs after the service. In a large church with a commercial kitchen, you have to follow health codes, plan to make sure you have enough food, schedule volunteers to arrange seating, and attend the parking lot. In a larger church, most events are planned 12 months in advance, and there is probably a minimum of 6-month lead time for a sizable event. In a larger church, there is a process of approvals to get events on the calendar and to schedule announcements. In a smaller church, you can plan an event on shorter notice and ask the pastor to make an announcement on Sunday. As our staff makes decisions, we remember to act appropriately to our size, whatever that size might be. 4) Scrappy & Stretchy This is my personal favorite. We are a larger church in a smaller town. The Lord has blessed us and provided for us abundantly, and we have absolutely nothing to complain about. And yet, for our staff who meet with staff of other large churches in the city, it is worth realizing that there are some differences, including financial differences. Because of our context, I think of us as the underdogs. We have to be scrappy. We make the absolute most out of everything we have and we are proud of that fact. This breeds innovation and careful stewardship in ministry. We also let our staff know that we have chosen to invest primarily in them. More valuable than a large ministry budget is having an amazing leader. We trust that if our staff is on the job, then it doesn’t matter how much or little they have to work with, they will make it an opportunity for disciples to be made. Because we are also a rapidly growing church, we face continual change. Our staff have to be able to stretch, flex, and adapt. Some of us have moved offices more than 5 times in the last 3 years. Some of our staff work with 4 or more people in an office designed for 1. We take it all with a smile because God is growing his church and we are blessed to be part of it. I hope that by hearing these staff values, you will be better able to see, describe, and protect your own staff culture. More Blogs You'll Like How To Conduct Staff Reviews Read More How To Create A Church Budget Read More Four Steps to Manageable Sermon-Writing Read More

An Overview of the End Times Sermon Series: The Church Never Preaches On... Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Mark 13:32-37 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. Very cool. So Sarah Jansen is one of our missionaries. And real quick, can we just say hi, Sarah and family? Because they're gonna be watching at some point today. Right now, let's just say it together. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Sarah. You guys are awesome, awesome. Well, welcome to our final message in our six-part series we've been calling The Church Never Preaches On. If you are just joining us for the first time, here's what happened. We asked our congregation, what are topics that you think the church never preaches on? Either topics here at Peace or across the nation. The church submitted a bunch of topics and then voted on the top six. And today, the last day of the series, we're looking at what was clearly the number one most voted topic that people thought the church never preaches on, which we're going to preach on today. And it's this, the church never preaches on an overview of the end times. Before I became a pastor, I was at my previous job and I had this really awkward and kind of intense conversation with this guy on the job. He came at me, he knew I was a Christian, and he said to me, he said, do you really think that Jesus Christ is sitting up there on some cloud and at some point he's just going to like float down to heaven and we're all supposed to worship him? You really think that's going to happen? And he started with kind of just like a mocking tone and then it got intense and kind of condemning because then he turned and said, you know, you really believe that? And I just was kind of looking at him and then he goes, do you realize how stupid that sounds? So don't tell me you actually believe that Christians, how would you answer? Yeah, I said I do believe that I mean, I don't believe he's just sitting on a cloud but I believe he's coming back I Do believe that and I said I'll give you three reasons why I believe that. Number one, it's because he already came from heaven to earth. That's what we get to celebrate every Christmas, the incarnation, that the son of God left heaven, came to earth, and that baby boy grew into the man that would be the savior of all the world as he died upon the cross for my sins and for your sins. That's the first reason. Second thing is because that man, the son of God who died on the cross in our place for our sins Three days after he was dead. He rose again from the dead which leads to kind of the third point that if the Son of God came from heaven to earth Died on a cross in our place for our sins was dead for three days and then rose himself From the dead if that guy says he's coming back, I'm going to believe him. And I said, you know what, let me give you a fourth reason. And I think this might be helpful for some of you as you encounter some opposition to this. I said, yeah, and I believe this. And here's another reason why I'll give you a fourth reason why. Because I don't believe that the future of this big beautiful universe, I don't believe the future of the universe is just to eventually grow dark and lifeless and slowly expand forever into the infinite void. My heart rejects that. I don't believe that. In my heart of hearts, I know that all of this actually matters. All of this is actually leading somewhere. And I believe you believe that too, if you would search the heart of your hearts. Because the Bible says that God has placed eternity into the hearts of men. There's just something about existence that we know this all actually matters. This is all actually leading somewhere. Not to a vast, infinite void of meaninglessness, but this is actually leading somewhere. This was all gonna culminate in something in my heart of hearts I believe that and I believe you do too and that something is The renewal of all things That something is the return of Jesus Christ. So yes, my friend. I do believe that Christ is coming back. I do believe that the King will return And that's what we're gonna look at today. We're gonna look at what Jesus says about the end times So please turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 13 We'll look at verses 32 to 37 if you do want to use up Bibles that we provided that's on page 10 81 But as you're turning there, I'll tell you this church if there is one issue where Bible loving Bible Believing Christians can have a lot of different opinions. It's in the end times. Now, in Mark chapter 13, we see Jesus speak about the end. He speaks about the destruction of the temple. He talks about the great and terrible time of tribulation, which is a great time of trials and suffering. And then he closes up this apocalyptic teaching by speaking about his own epic return. And this is what he says. God's Word Mark chapter 13. We'll read verses 32 to 37. Jesus says this, Mark 13:32-37 32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake.[a] For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants[b] in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows,[c] or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Amen, this is God's Word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray father in heaven above Lord for whatever and however the end times unfold I pray that by the power of the Spirit by our faith in Jesus You would help us to stand ready to be alert and awake to be vigilant. Holy Spirit, help us to rightly understand the Word of God today. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray these things. And everyone said, Amen. So church and friends, if there's one thing I could tell you today, one main point as you walk away from this morning, it would be this. Christ has announced that He will return, so we must be prepared And as we consider the end times, let's look at two things from our passage. First one is this We'll see that we don't know when the end will happen So we must stand guard and the second thing is that we don't know when the king will return so we must stay Awake, so let's get into the first part here. 1. We don't know when it will happen, So we must stand guard (vv. 32-33) So Jesus and the scriptures say a lot about the end times but not enough to give us a clear timeline where every single Christian agrees. But listen to me, that's not Jesus' prerogative. He doesn't give us all that we want to know, he gives us what we need to know. And in fact, while Jesus was on earth, he wasn't aware of all the details of the end times agenda, but he was clear on the assignments, and that's a model for us. Listen to what Jesus says here. Keep your Bibles open, verse 32. But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake, for you do not know when the time will come. Okay, so to be on guard, to keep awake, as Jesus says, this means that we need to live our lives in light of the fact that this is all heading somewhere. And we don't know when it's going to happen. So we're reading from Mark chapter 13 right now, but the counterpart to this passage is in Matthew 24. And in that part, Jesus speaks about how people will eventually forget that he's coming back and they're just gonna start living their lives completely ignorant of the fact that Christ is at work and doing something and is going to return. Talks about how there'll be these people who are just distracted by daily life, rather than keeping awake. These are the people who are more concerned about where their next vacation will be, rather than where they will go after they die. They're not living lives in preparation for the end to come or the fact that Christ will return I don't know about you sound like people of our culture Church we don't know when it will happen. So we must stand guard. So here's the question. What is the it? What will the end times? Actually be like so let's get into this. Let's talk about some various end times, we need to discuss what's often seen as the major components of the end times events. And then people will build their theologies around what the Bible reveals as far as these major milestones. So it's mainly these four big things. Number one, the millennium reign of Christ. Christ, mentioned in Revelation chapter 20. This is where Revelation speaks about a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth. Then the second thing is the rapture. This is clearly, easily, culturally the most popular notion of the end times. Books and movies are produced all about the rapture. And we'll get into this, but that teaching primarily comes, at least the word rapture, comes from what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians, but more on that later. So the millennium reign of Christ, the rapture, and then there's the great tribulation. This is noted as a great time of distress upon earth as the world descends into disorder, chaos, and suffering. Kind of seems like we might be at the beginning of that. I don't know. I'm not a prophet. The return of Jesus Christ. Speaking as the great and final return of Christ that Jesus himself said would happen, the return of Christ is what all the end times prophecies and theologies ultimately culminate in. That forever and however it happens, in the end, Christ will return to usher in the great renewal of all things, wiping away every tear and every pain from which we'll be able to live forever gloriously with our Savior and God for all time. Now, when it comes to those four major components, again, the millennium, the rapture, the tribulation, and the return of Christ, the ways that different end times theologies are formulated is in relation to those as far as what they look like, how they play out, and the order of those things. Now, usually what happens is of those four, there's two pairs that get grouped together. Oftentimes the millennium and the return of Christ will get paired together, we'll talk about that. And then the rapture as it relates to the great tribulation. So let's start with the millennium. In Revelation chapter 20, the apostle Paul, I'm sorry, the apostle John, in Revelation chapter 20, the apostle John is given a vision of what is a 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth. And so when we talk about that, there's three primary theologies or categories that get surrounded around this thousand-year reign. Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, and Amillennialism. So premillennialism basically means that Jesus has a sort of first coming that kind of inaugurates his thousand-year reign on earth which concludes with his final and glorious return that ushers in the new heavens and the new earth Then as you can probably bet Postmillennialism means that Jesus return comes after or post the 1,000 year reign and That 1,000 year reign is typically more ushered in by the church in Jesus while not physically He is still ruling and reigning through his church for this thousand years. And then there's amillennialism. Now amillennialism, like atheist, basically means that there's no literal one thousand year reign. Now clearly Revelation chapter 20 speaks of a thousand year reign of Christ. So what amillennialists will do is they'll say that that one thousand year reign, that's just a symbolic term for an extended period of time. Revelation speaks in apocalyptic literature, not everything can be taken literally. The thousand year reign is just an extended period of time for which Christ is ruling and reigning via his church that essentially started with the life, death, resurrection, but then ascension of Jesus to heaven. The church is ushered in, this is the time of the church, that Jesus rules and reigns through his church through an extended period of time, proverbially called a thousand years, which will culminate in his final return." Now, those are three ways that people begin to end the end times as it relates to the millennium. And I will even say, and if you hold a different view, then you understand that there's various branches even within those views. But another way that people categorize the end times, I'm just going to pause right now and just call out something that I know to be true. There's three groups of people in here right now. One group is bored out of their ever-loving mind. Second group is like, hmm, this is interesting. And there's a third group who are listening ever so intently at every single word to make sure I get it right. I love being a pastor. This is great. Just kidding, I really do. So another way people begin to categorize the end times is they think about the rapture as it relates to the great tribulation. Again, the rapture primarily referenced in 1 Thessalonians 4, but then also as it relates to the great tribulation that's mentioned in places like Daniel 12, Matthew 24, and Revelation chapter 7. For these views, we basically have three understandings because Christians really like the number three. Pre-trib, mid-trib, and post-trib rapture. Now this all has to do with whether or not God will allow his people to go through the time known as the tribulation or if they will be raptured that is taken out to avoid the suffering so one of the more common ones is called pre-trib rapture clearly meaning that the church that Christians are raptured before the tribulation pre-tribulation rapture mid-trib mid-trib is where Christians experience partly or half of the tribulation but then are raptured out so they don't experience it in full. But then of course we have the post-trib rapture, where Christians and the church experience the full tribulation, but then we are raptured at its conclusion. Now as you think about those different theologies, these are already assuming that the return of Christ and the rapture are separate things. Now let me just say this real quick. I might... We at Peace Church, we are from the Reformed tradition. I did not grow up in the Reformed tradition. I grew up mainline. I'm a Reformed convert. You all welcomed me in so graciously. So I didn't grow up in a tradition or a church that I don't ever remember hearing about the end times. And it's often noted that the Reformed tradition doesn't have a great emphasis on it as well. But here's what I've come to find out. It's often believed that the Reformed tradition does not believe in the Rapture. Let me just tell you that's not true. Maybe some individuals don't believe in the Rapture, but this notion comes right from the Bible, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. But the notion here that Reformed people often fall into, not fall into, but believe based on Scripture, is that the Rapture and the return of Christ happen at the same time. So let's talk about this. Okay, the word rapture. I don't know about you, but the very first time I heard the word rapture, because I didn't grow up in a tradition that had a heavy emphasis on it, let's see if you remember this. The very first time I remember hearing that word rapture is from the Wizard of Oz. Remember when the scarecrow says, joy, rapture. Okay, moving on. Watch it later and then you can text me. So the word rapture comes from what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians. Now the word rapture comes from the Latin, but the original Greek word here that Paul wrote in, because remember Paul wrote in Greek, the original word is harpizo. And that means to be caught up. That's the word that Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians. Now, interesting note, harpizo is where we get our English word harpoon. If you think about a harpoon that's thrown down, catches something, then we bring it back up. That's kind of a notion there, that harpizo is about being caught up or being like brought up. So, the common word that we use in our vernacular is often the word rapture. Again, that comes out of the Latin tradition, rather than harpizo, which comes from the Greek. But they mean the same thing, and they originate from the very same passage here in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. We're going to look at verses 15 to 18. You can turn there if you want, otherwise I'll read it for you. Here's what Paul writes as it relates to what we call the rapture. Verse 15, For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. Left until the coming of the Lord. So Paul is speaking here about the return of Jesus Christ. Verse 16 for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of a command with the voice of the archangel With the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first then we who are alive Who are left will be caught up? Will be harpid zode will be raptured together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air So that we'll always be with the Lord. The notion there is not that we're all hanging out in the sky, but that as Christ is returning, we will meet Him in the air and we join Him in His procession back to earth from which we will be forever together with Jesus. But I love what it says in verse 18. Therefore, encourage one another with these words, because this is something that we should look forward to. This shouldn't fill us with anxiety or fear. This is something exciting that we should long for. Now, when I read this passage, I know many would disagree, but it seems pretty clear to me that this speaks about the one and only return of Jesus Christ, that when that happens, he will descend from the clouds with the sound of the trumpet of God and will be raptured into the air as part of the welcoming party that comes with Christ in his glorious procession And his return to earth Now another passage people will try to will look to draw from Teachings in the rapture is from first Corinthians 15 and even if that is speaking of the rapture listen what it says in verse 52 Says that this will happen in a flash in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet at the last trumpet. So here's another reason why I believe that the rapture happens at the one and only return of Christ, because there's no explicit teaching in scripture that says Christ will return twice. Some people think Christ will return in a sense, at least partially, to rapture his people or to rule and reign for the thousand years, but then he will return again at the final coming where he ushers in the renewal of all things. Now that seems logical and you can put that together from past decisions in scripture, but you have to kind of insert that meaning because there's no explicit teaching that says there's two second comings of Christ. Every time in scripture we hear about the return of Christ, it seems clear to me that there's only one return. But again, for certain end times theologies to work We have to insert that notion of a first return or a partial return in order to make sense of different end times theologies And timelines, so let's just stop here for a second because My Baptist friends blood is already starting to boil So let me say quick three quick things. We at Peace Church, we are gonna have people in every end time category, and I love that. Because here at Peace we are gospel-centered. That we believe the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and our job is to share that message, and that's the focus that we center ourselves around. And from that we can have fun, charitable disagreements on secondary issues. But the first thing is that we at Peace Church, we're going to have people in different end times categories. Secondly, there are people here who come from a tradition that had a significant emphasis on this. I did not. That means that we're going to have people here who are far more read up and far more passionate about this than I am, which leads to the third thing, which is probably the hardest thing, is that people in each category are going to complain that I did not do a good good enough job of defending their position. So I will confess to you right now the point I'm making right now is the point that I believe Jesus was making and it's this that we don't know when it will happen. So we must stand guard. Church, I'm here to tell you I am more concerned with being found in Christ. I'm more concerned with sharing the gospel with my neighbor. I'm more concerned with getting my family right before the Lord than I am excited about figuring out a complex series of passages to delineate how they all work together. Now, here's what's true about every End Times theology, even the one that I personally hold. When it comes to the End Times, what you have to do, what every position has to do, is piecemeal it together from various passages while also at the same time discerning what's literal prophecy versus symbolic versus what's already been fulfilled it's very complex I'm not saying it's bad to do I'm just saying it's hard to do and nor am I saying it's a waste of time at all the Bible is written for us to us and so it's part of knowing our Bibles it's fun to do but it's just hard but I'm saying to you exactly what Jesus himself said About that day and time nobody knows only the Father in heaven meaning I Don't believe any of us will fully understand how this is all gonna work out until after it happens and Then on the backside of this we can all stand together and look back and say, oh, that's how it was supposed to happen. And then we turn around and we worship Jesus and we don't worry about it again. So if you were more concerned about figuring out the end times than you are concerned about discipling your kids or your grandkids or sharing the gospel with your neighbor, then you're not heeding the words of Jesus himself. Which brings us to the second point. 2. We don't know when the King will return, so we must stay awake. So Jesus is given this teaching, then he turns to like this quick little parable. Look at verse 34. Jesus says, it's like a man going on a journey and he leaves his home, but he puts his servants in charge, each with his work and he commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore, stay awake for you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning lest he come suddenly and find you asleep and what I say to you I say to all stay awake so it's clear here in this teaching that Jesus is referring to himself as the master and he's going to leave for a while but he will return he says the master leaves the servants with each quote each his own work to clarify Jesus is the master, we are his servants who are in charge until he returns. So my question for you, my friends and fellow Christians, is are you at work? Are you getting to work? Are you attending to your job? Are you staying awake? The question you need to be asking yourself, Christians, is where are you connected or involved or on mission? Where are you serving the church or ministering in the name of Jesus. The question is, what are you actually doing with your faith? Many of us just keep our faith in our back pocket as our little ticket to heaven. That's not how it works. Your faith is part of an assignment that God has given to you to live out until either you go to heaven or Christ comes back. So my question for you is, what are you doing with your faith? I'm more concerned about that answer than where you stand on end times prophecy. We don't know when Christ will return during the day, at night, towards the morning. What Jesus is saying is that there will be no immediate warning. We don't know when it's going to happen, so we need to stay awake. Of course, Jesus is speaking symbolically here. He doesn't mean we can't actually sleep. What he means is that we can't be found lazy. We can't be found not doing our job. We can't be found not engaged in the mission of Christ or the focus of God. Jesus is saying that we all need to be doing our work. So Christian, my big question for you, what are you doing with your faith? To be asleep means that we're more focused on this life without any notion of preparing for Christ to come back. Christians, do you know that Jesus is returning at any moment? And are you prepared for Christ to come back at any moment? Now, let me give you a little something here. You're gonna hear pastors say that you need to prepare for the return of Christ. Let me tool you with something. Your response to that should be, okay, what does that mean to be prepared? Listen, I'm a simple man, I'll give you a simple answer. Here's what it means to be prepared for the return of Christ. It means that when Jesus Christ does return, that you've done everything that you're supposed to do for Him. That moment that Christ descends and you hear that trumpet call, that you don't think to yourself, oh no, oh no, I didn't do this. I didn't get to do this, or I didn't get to do that. Now listen to me, I'm not talking about visiting the Grand Canyon or going to that trip to Switzerland, to my friends who are in Switzerland right now, actually. This means that you did everything that God had called you to do for Him. If Christ was to come back today, what do you wish you would have done for Him and in His name? Because here's what I'm going to tell you, whatever that is, do that now. The time is growing short. The window is closing. Dawn is breaking. The King is coming back. And you need to be prepared for that. And again, that just means when he returns, you don't sit there and think, oh no, I didn't get to do this. Oh no, I didn't tell my co-worker about Jesus. Oh no. You did everything you're supposed to do. That's what it means to be prepared for Christ to come back. So here's what I'll tell you, because I know some of you are wondering where I personally land in all this. So here's what I'll tell you. Ultimately, I am a pan-millennialist. What that means is that for those in Christ, it'll all pan out. Wasn't going to let you off without a dad joke. But seriously, but seriously, with nobody fully knowing, here's what I say to you, we can each be fully convinced in our own minds with our own research of the Bible about how this will play out. And I empower you, I commend you, search the scriptures, search the scriptures. But if even Christ didn't know how it was all going to play out when he was here, if Christ didn't systematically articulate a clear series of prophesied events and their order, then here's what I'd say to you. When it comes to the end times, all of us need to approach this with abundant humility and charity towards other Bible-believing Christians. I will tell you exactly what I believe. I believe Jesus Christ is coming back and we better be found ready and waiting and working for him. We better be found fighting for the kingdom and preparing for the Christ to return. The very last two, the last two, not just pages, but the last two verses of the Bible for me are so profound and they're so sobering and they give us just a great focus. The last two verses of the entire Bible are this. Revelation chapter 22 verses 20 to 21. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen. So are we in the end times? Well, practically speaking, I guess how it, how you, I guess it depends on how you mark the start of the end times, but here's what I'll tell you. Every day that goes by, we get closer to the end. Every day that goes by is one day closer to the return of Christ. And we need to be prepared for that moment to happen at any time. And so I say with John, the writer of Revelation, I too say, come Lord Jesus. I am ready. I want him to come now. Yes, it's true. The Bible says there's things that need to happen before Christ returns. I'll tell you now, not all those boxes are checked, but it seems to me like those boxes are getting checked pretty quickly these days. I watch for his return. I long for his return. On the one hand, I want him to come back today to put an end to all this madness. I am ready for heaven. I'm only in my 40s, but I am ready for my eternal home. But on the other hand, I have friends and family who have not yet believed on the name Jesus. And so I am thankful for the time that God has given to us that I might share the gospel. And so I will honor Christ with what he says at the end of our passage. And what I say to you, I say to all, stay awake. One thing I'm hearing a lot these days is you're hearing a great call from pastors to the church saying, wake up. It's time to wake up, church. I agree with that in a sense, but here's what I'm saying. This is a call not just to wake up to what's happening politically or culturally. That's important. But to wake up means to realize that the end is near and that we are staying on task. That we're not being lazy, but we're being on mission. The return of Christ is going to happen. Jesus himself said, yes, I am coming soon. My friends, Jesus Christ is the son of God who came from heaven to earth that he might be the final and complete sacrifice for your sin and my sin, our past, present, and future sin. And upon the Christ, Jesus paid the penalty in full so that we might be brought back to God with no longer having that sin barrier between us and God. Jesus smashed that down with his life, death, and resurrection so that we could experience the full love of God through the Son. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the guarantee that his promises are true that our salvation is secure. And also that he is coming back again So repent and place your faith in him because the time is growing short Don't get so distracted by life that you forget what's to come Be found watching be found waiting be found working for the kingdom be found rejoicing in and sharing the gospel Don't be found sleeping or distracted watch Stay awake for he is returning. Yes, our King is coming back Amen Now church, we're gonna close with a song that we don't sing very often here at peace But I think it's a really great song to close our time with And so would you please stand and let's sing glorious day Father we come before you we pray Lord in Jesus name That you would help us by the power of the Spirit by the truth of your word Through your love that we would stand ready Lord that we would do all that you're calling us to do Father not in order to earn our salvation But in response to our salvation and in response to the words of Jesus who himself said he is returning. So Father, we long for that glorious day. And Father, as we sing the words here of the gospel again, I pray God that you would send your spirit to descend upon this church here and now, that we'd lift up our voices in one, in unison, as we cry out that Jesus is King, and as we long for the day, the glorious day of his return. Be with us now, Father, in Jesus' name. And everyone said, amen. Church, let's sing together.